Kevin McDonnell - @kevmcdonk: Welcome to the Copilot Connection. We're here to share with you all the news, insights, and capabilities of the Microsoft Copilot ecosystem across the entire Microsoft stack. This is our regular deeper dive into the more dev side of Copilot and Agents. I'm Kevin McDonnell, MVP for Copilot, Copilot Extensibility, and UK lead for Copilot and Agents at Afanaard.
Garry Trinder - @garrytrinder: Hi everyone, my name is Gary Trinder. I'm a advocate at Microsoft. I work in the Microsoft Copilot Advocacy Team. So anything to do with copilot extensibility, I am all over that. So happy to be with you today. Happy to be with you, Kev, we've got plenty to talk about.
Kevin McDonnell - @kevmcdonk: Well, you might be until I say this. So you know from my t shirt behind me what a pedant I am. A advocate, Gary? A advocates? You you you were
Garry Trinder - @garrytrinder: Yeah well
Kevin McDonnell - @kevmcdonk: gonna say a developer advocate, then you panicked and went, I can't work out what I am anymore.
Garry Trinder - @garrytrinder: I know, I like what is a developer nowadays, right? Everyone's writing code. Sorry, agents are writing code. Yeah. So it it's not
Kevin McDonnell - @kevmcdonk: I'm a I'm a vibe code I'm a vibe code advocate.
Garry Trinder - @garrytrinder: that developers and are not important anymore. Absolutely not. I am a I am a dev, you know, I'm true dev, but like It's the world's changed, right? It's it's it's advocacy, it's it's co-pilot extensibility, whether that is you're you know writing code yourself, you get an agent to do it, or you're kind of clicking around as well. It's like, you know, everything that you need to do to get your job done, basically.
Kevin McDonnell - @kevmcdonk: I I'm laughing. I'm looking over in my notes and says it's been a while. You can tell from our intro already, can't you? Sorry.
Garry Trinder - @garrytrinder: Yeah, exactly. Six well, n not quite six months, but nearly.
Kevin McDonnell - @kevmcdonk: No. it it was builds, wasn't it? Was the last time you and I had a show
Garry Trinder - @garrytrinder: It was, yeah.
Kevin McDonnell - @kevmcdonk: and and apologies also the shows with Zoe have been a bit quiet. we've all been busy with life, work, and many other things on there. So sorry it's been a little bit quieter with the podcasts as well. been busy, Zoe, she has been up organising Scottish Summits. You can see I've got my lovely pink top from the Scottish Summit last weekend, had a fantastic Time up there. I was talking about Agent 365 as well as joining Sarah Fenner and Rex DeKoenig on doing a new speaker workshop. So a whole day on that. also had a very emotional session. It was only 20 minutes, but talking about bouncing back from failure. That had some incredible feedback from people. So looking forward to doing that again somewhere. and then hosting awards in the evening with a Kaylee, which it's fair to say my sore foot is still recovering from. But
Garry Trinder - @garrytrinder: Do we want to ask?
Kevin McDonnell - @kevmcdonk: Good good to get out in person. It was the Cayley. I I have various feet problems at the moment. And apparently,
Garry Trinder - @garrytrinder: Okay.
Kevin McDonnell - @kevmcdonk: even though I can hardly walk, I can still jump up and down and leap around in a Cayley. I had my my co-speaker on sheep herding with Agent 365, Adina Olive Watchkinson, which whose name I still can't say properly. yes, we we were dancing around like lunatics, along with other people as well. So it was it was a lot of fun. But it was good. And and you've been you've been out at in person events, Gary, which is a bit of a shocker.
Garry Trinder - @garrytrinder: I have yeah, yeah. So so we've had the Fly with Copilot event series that we've launched. we actually had first stop in Seattle, Redmond, Microsoft Offices, and then first one in Europe, which was Prague. So I went along to that. I covered SharePoint agents and all the good stuff coming into SharePoint on the day on the day it went G A, no less. So I feel like
Kevin McDonnell - @kevmcdonk: Gary had to share point. really?
Garry Trinder - @garrytrinder: you know I Giving everyone in the in the audience the you know the the the true kind of view of what SharePoint can do. And you're laughing, kind of like, you know, I was a bit like, I'm talking about SharePoint agents. I I I've I've worked with SharePoint for a long, long time, right? To the point where you kind of go, SharePoint, yeah, I know what that's about. And then you look back,
Kevin McDonnell - @kevmcdonk: You sorry, you didn't say loved you didn't say loved SharePoint for a long time though.
Garry Trinder - @garrytrinder: it's a love hate relationship, right? I think everyone who's worked with SharePoint or even developed on SharePoint will probably say that.
Kevin McDonnell - @kevmcdonk: Yeah.
Garry Trinder - @garrytrinder: But it was it was really cool to come back and kind of look at like SharePoint now, but with AI coming in was really interesting because the jobs that like I would have done back in the day as a consultant and like designing like a site layout, list, maybe even metadata, and having the site creation agent kind of do that for you and you're able to go through it in natural language and build out the structure of your site. I was like, that's like we've come a long way since the days of, you know, I remember
Kevin McDonnell - @kevmcdonk: Lady.
Garry Trinder - @garrytrinder: create having a diagram of all the the different things that we were gonna build and then you know that would take a while and then you go off and write the scripts to build it and and and all that now it's all in an agent and the the platform can build that out for for you and you know it I'm not saying it's gonna do everything for you but it gets you eighty ninety percent of the way and that's just so much easier like you know the whole we've created a SharePoint site, great, and it's just the default. Like, okay, what are we doing here? Like now you can get kind of past that. But yeah, it was it was really interesting kind of session and I think a lot of other people were surprised in the room as well. Like, yeah, SharePoint
Kevin McDonnell - @kevmcdonk: Yeah.
Garry Trinder - @garrytrinder: can do this now. This is pretty cool. so that was good.
Kevin McDonnell - @kevmcdonk: I I I loved it. Adam Harmitz put out a post of a few hidden gems that were missed and I did miss them. And he was saying that Copilot Search is coming inside SharePoint and OneDrive, which I I really like the Copilot search. It's really powerful. So I like that one. OneDrive is getting the same AI enrichment as well. and also getting new site analytics report, image generation right in line in right in libraries and real time metadata autofill within that. So Really nice. I'll put the link to that post 'cause there's some videos in the show notes as well.
Garry Trinder - @garrytrinder: the metadata one is just like, like how like back in the days of console, right? Well,
Kevin McDonnell - @kevmcdonk: Yeah.
Garry Trinder - @garrytrinder: metadata is ev and metadata now is more important than anything, right? Context. And having that metadata is really important. It was always the case if you'd set everything up, but
Kevin McDonnell - @kevmcdonk: Nah, co pilot does it for you.
Garry Trinder - @garrytrinder: Yeah, but you still need it, right? You need to still create, but it it's still it's
Kevin McDonnell - @kevmcdonk: No, I agree. I agree.
Garry Trinder - @garrytrinder: it it's an end user task. Put the document in, fill in all the metadata. What do people do? They put the document in, they forget about it. And then, you know, anything to make that easier and pull context like out of the documents, like, hey, I've got these columns, go make them into autofill columns, or actually, you know, I've just dumped a load of things in, go and go and extract information from these documents, do that right in SharePoint now. Like just click the copilot button and and and ask. I think that's really, really useful for like a an end user, just like information worker just working in a library like all day and and keeping that kind of curated. so that was like really interesting.
Kevin McDonnell - @kevmcdonk: Sorry sorry, in in the document library, not in the physical library, you mean the Possibly both, I guess. Yeah, yeah. Good place to go and get some work done. Yeah, not get distracted.
Garry Trinder - @garrytrinder: well I mean could be. Could be sh SharePoint in the library. Yeah. quiet at least.
Kevin McDonnell - @kevmcdonk: talking of not getting distracted.
Garry Trinder - @garrytrinder: yeah, yeah, true. We we kinda went into the SharePoint hole. Sorry about that.
Kevin McDonnell - @kevmcdonk: but we had some exciting news to share 'cause you were over in Prague for Fly with Copilot, and I believe the intention is to run some more around the world as well.
Garry Trinder - @garrytrinder: There is. so we have some more coming up. We've got one in Zurich, which is early November. we can share the details around that. We share details about the series so that you can see that when we are coming to your town, so to speak, or city. but we also have one planned for December. I'm gonna let you say this one, Kev. Go on.
Kevin McDonnell - @kevmcdonk: Yep. I was gonna say December the seventh, we are hoping to host in the Avenard Accenture offices, in London. So very excited to be bringing Fly with Copilot. hope we're gonna get Donna over there yourself. I think I'd well if I say it, then he has to do it. But I think Dan Laskovitz said he's gonna come over as well. so still in final planning details, we're gonna get some other MVPs along to Come and join us as well and yeah, hopefully you can get registration out soon and keep Donna away from that menu before I get in a lot of trouble internally.
Garry Trinder - @garrytrinder: Yeah, the the food menu we'll we'll add the the session the session menu. Yeah, yeah. The session menu
Kevin McDonnell - @kevmcdonk: The food menu, yes. Sorry, yes. That's allowed.
Garry Trinder - @garrytrinder: is is not just SharePoint. just to kind of s yeah say that it's it's not all SharePoint,
Kevin McDonnell - @kevmcdonk: Yeah.
Garry Trinder - @garrytrinder: so don't run away. we're covering the whole like whole copilot extensibility. So we'll be doing, you know, agent builder to work IQ to the the new things that are coming and through to agent three six five as well and all the So we're covering everything in these sessions.
Kevin McDonnell - @kevmcdonk: Yeah. And it and it's a very getting into the detail of the products. This isn't sort of high level kind of vision and strategy type slides. I might I might get in trouble
Garry Trinder - @garrytrinder: Well
Kevin McDonnell - @kevmcdonk: for this one. This isn't an Accenture presentation. This is going down into detail showing real demos and things, isn't it?
Garry Trinder - @garrytrinder: I mean, my view is I want as less less slides as possible. I want to get away from the slides, we want to get into demos, we to show you stuff, and that's what this is about is that even showing you things that we're doing as a team as well, and kind of giving you that view. and you know, if you have got some of these capabilities, come along with your laptop, kind of hack around, ask us questions as well whilst we're doing it. But yeah, we want it to be very much like, you know, we're showing you the product as it is. things that you can do with it as well. not just the yeah, slide by slide kind of approach.
Kevin McDonnell - @kevmcdonk: Yeah. And it's it's a few weeks post Ignite, so we'll have the latest updates and things from there, which will be great. So yeah. Really looking
Garry Trinder - @garrytrinder: It is. Yeah. It's gonna be a busy time.
Kevin McDonnell - @kevmcdonk: forward to that. And and it's a shame, 'cause there there hasn't been much news recently, has there? Yeah.
Garry Trinder - @garrytrinder: No, not all. Shall we go now?
Kevin McDonnell - @kevmcdonk: That's it, done. no, I think we're gonna kick off on I think the biggest news, it's always a a controversial statement to make, but especially when my machine's not sharing. No, no, no, no. Don't leave. So I decided to leave the studio. There we go. is the new copilot with home code and autopilot. What was affectionately known for a while as the super app. you did tell me earlier there's a proper name for it, which I couldn't see in here. I mean it's basically the copilot app, isn't it? But it's now got everything all in one place.
Garry Trinder - @garrytrinder: Yes. And and this is kind of like we were talking about it earlier. It's the progression of the the the great convergence, if you like. so you
Kevin McDonnell - @kevmcdonk: Mm-hmm.
Garry Trinder - @garrytrinder: could call it like one copilot where, you know, we had M35 copilot, we had the consumer copilot as well. you've probably already seen that. Like that's now into one app. so you just see co-pilot. and in M365 co-pilot, obviously, then there's a bit more of a conversion. because you know, we've had originally it was M365 copilot, then we had chat, cowork comes along, we've got new things like code, we've got autopilot as well. So it's really kind of bringing that vision together of rather than it being separate kind of systems that it's all in together and that it's all a lot more easier to to get into from an end user perspective. One brand, yeah.
Kevin McDonnell - @kevmcdonk: One brand, Microsoft Copilot, simple there. I I think there's been a little confusion. I've heard a little bit of noise around some of the mobile apps that there's now copilot legacy and that's disabled, but it
Garry Trinder - @garrytrinder: A yeah.
Kevin McDonnell - @kevmcdonk: I I I kind of get where people are complaining. on there I think we're getting to a good point where it'll all be merged. There's always a little bit of teething with these things as people get used to it and where to go. But it it's simplifying and I think simplifying is a good thing.
Garry Trinder - @garrytrinder: yeah, so we've seen kind of like the chat and the cowork kind of come together. Home
Kevin McDonnell - @kevmcdonk: Mm. Mm.
Garry Trinder - @garrytrinder: is now the the combination of chat and cowork together. so you've got like the the home and the the code and the autopilot. so you know, that kind of like chat experience kind of all comes through like home.
Kevin McDonnell - @kevmcdonk: So just just quickly for people, when when we say c that the home is chat plus co work, what
Garry Trinder - @garrytrinder: Yeah.
Kevin McDonnell - @kevmcdonk: it means is when you go and type, it will work out whether you're trying to use chat capabilities or whether there's actually benefit of that deeper power of cowork. But and I have had this validated, I'm fairly sure I can talk about this, it will always ask you first. I know I've had quite a few people that get nervous that, hang on, it's always gonna go to cowork and start burning through my credits. No, if it's going to use credits, it will always say, we think this will be useful in cowork. Would you like to go ahead and you ha you as a user have the choice on what you do with that, which I think is really important.
Garry Trinder - @garrytrinder: Mm. Yeah, it's things like automations, for example, that you have in cowork. those are obviously still using cowork. that's not through
Kevin McDonnell - @kevmcdonk: Mm-hmm. Yeah.
Garry Trinder - @garrytrinder: that's not through chat. So yeah, it it's kind of obviously this is rolling out as well. So the blog post is kind of a, you know, this is kind of what's what's coming. so it's kind of something to keep an eye out on as as things progress. So if you are in the Frontier program, obviously you'll see that first. so it you know, if you are looking at this And how this is going to change for end users as well, for your adoption and your champions programs as well. Then
Kevin McDonnell - @kevmcdonk: Yeah, good good point.
Garry Trinder - @garrytrinder: then keep an eye on that. Because I'm very conscious that we're announcing quite a lot of things and and
Kevin McDonnell - @kevmcdonk: Mm-hmm.
Garry Trinder - @garrytrinder: it's a lot of change. I think it's it's for the good, but it's all happening, it feels all at the same time. So I'm, you know, I'm not surprised that there'll be a few people like, okay, how many changes are coming and what's it going to end up like? But
Kevin McDonnell - @kevmcdonk: I was gonna say it's it's being announced. Some things are out now, some are coming soon, some are kind of
Garry Trinder - @garrytrinder: Yeah.
Kevin McDonnell - @kevmcdonk: private previews. So i it it's kind of almost like a bit post ignite. You get a similar thing where some are available straight away, some are coming through. It's similar story to that, really.
Garry Trinder - @garrytrinder: Yeah. Yeah, and it it's keep an eye on it because they say we've got Ignite coming up. There will be more kind of changes or coming or or you'll see the changes landing around that time as well. so yeah, like I say, keep an eye on it, keep a look in the message center as well. everything's been posted in there. No, I see lots of people sharing things on LinkedIn. So everyone seems to be dialed in on on those quite well. but yeah it's it's definitely something to keep an eye.
Kevin McDonnell - @kevmcdonk: and I think the other interesting bit, a new name, Office in Copilot. So it's going have that full power of Word Excel and PowerPoint within Copilot, which is interesting. So it's not, it's not just seeing that, you'll be able to kind of almost edit and work on things within the Copilot app, which I'm intrigued about how that will flow together. But I like it. It's kind of blending where where you kind of used to come in from Copilot and then move out into PowerPoint. Now you can go into PowerPoint or you can kind of Come in from PowerPoint, use a bit of co-pilot. It's it's bringing those things a bit closer together as well. You can see movement. then we've got autopilot. I think I'm I'm gonna jump around slightly because yeah, it may not always seem like it, but we do plan a flow to this, to these calls.
Garry Trinder - @garrytrinder: Hey.
Kevin McDonnell - @kevmcdonk: But autopilot, I think it's fair to you. The artist formerly known as Microsoft Scouts, on there. It's it's a little bit more than a rename, but certainly for those who've had the desktop scout, this is now moving into into the cloud. so it will run whether you have your desktop open or not. You will still have local capabilities, I believe from that through the app. So there's there's still gonna be some capability from there within it, but effectively it will do things On your behalf.
Garry Trinder - @garrytrinder: Mm. Yeah, it's it's an interesting thing. so a few members of my team have an autopilot. I don't just yet. I'm
Kevin McDonnell - @kevmcdonk: Yeah.
Garry Trinder - @garrytrinder: still waiting for mine. But it's like everyone now has their own like AI assistant that can join the chats and the meetings. And yeah, kind of we get some hilarity from from that because each each each AI assistant has their own obviously preferences and way to react to things. so yeah, we're we're trying this out at the moment. It's really interesting. playing around with it seeing where we can get kinda get the value from it. But I know folks in my team they they are running with this and it's becoming like the way that they work now. it's changed the way that they work. because like these are now things that you can delegate to. They're in the the org chart as well so they they show up as like a one of your reports if you like. so yeah it's it's it's a very different way to having and using assistance that we've done in the past. Because other people can interact with it.
Kevin McDonnell - @kevmcdonk: Yes. I don't know if we can talk about the chat group we've had with other people, the with their autopilot on, but
Garry Trinder - @garrytrinder: Probably not.
Kevin McDonnell - @kevmcdonk: it has been highly entertaining sort of seeing seeing how that reacts from there. And and I think you hit the nail on your head, there's gonna be a level of experimentation on what you delegate, how things actually work, et cetera, et cetera, which I I I think people were nervous about. We're gonna come back a little bit later to talk about costs and things like that. But I think that is the excuse me, the other factor of how you can control that will be an interesting point as well. the final block within the the super app is code. And and initially I I didn't really find that that we got that much information about codes when it was first announced. it it kind of says in here powered by the same underlying technology as GitHub Copilots. within there. So for those who've used the GitHub Copilot app, there's a lot of familiarity to to how that works within there. it it it's just it it's kind of talks about being able to describe an app tracker dashboard automation or workflow in natural language within there, which to me felt more something that kind of non-coders would be building. But it talked about being able to bring your GitHub Copilot license and bring that full code experience into there as well. So I am slightly intrigued to see what does come of this. The bit that that has evolved and we're gonna move on to in a sec, was it talks within there about code runs in a sandboxed environment and can be hosted securely within your tenant. And I love this. As someone who's seen a lot of clawed HTML apps go floating around the I are either kind of a hosted in Claude or hosted in OneDrive I've seen quite a bit and people emailing HTML files. People emailing HTML files. What has the world come to? this way you can manage those and put a level of governance around that, which I'm I'm really excited to sort of see more detail and get more info on that.
Garry Trinder - @garrytrinder: Yeah, it it's so code's been interesting. I've been having to play around with like an an early version and you can have this kind of like with the GitHub Copilot app, right? You've got the ability to do things locally, but you'll also have the ability to do things in the cloud as well. So you kind of have that, you know, I I'll just throw a a a prompt in or get me to build something and I can walk away from it. but yeah, it's using the the your local machine as well and having that kind of capability. So it's all sandboxed. But yeah, you it's it's GitHub Copilot. i in in Copilot. Like you can get it to build anything. It's
Kevin McDonnell - @kevmcdonk: Effectively, yeah.
Garry Trinder - @garrytrinder: it it's not like the examples that are given are like dashboards and things because it's like I think it is being aimed at the you know, the person who is been
Kevin McDonnell - @kevmcdonk: Average knowledge worker.
Garry Trinder - @garrytrinder: yeah, kind of like who's been using Claude code maybe. Just like, hey, I want to build this this this dashboard and then you have it and like, okay, what do we do with it? Like nah it's kind of it's in that story, but it is It is Git Co pilot. So it can build anything that you want. And I find this really interesting because like for me, straight away I was like, I want it to build like SharePoint framework apps. I want it to build a web part. Like I want it to deploy that web part. Like just go and do it. And and that's where I think that would be really interesting if, you know, over time like we have things in there that are just like, Hey, I can build things where I need code in this. for my organization as well.
Kevin McDonnell - @kevmcdonk: So I I I feel obliged to kind of pull across the kind of message of so hang on, I've got GitHub copilot, I can do things in VS
Garry Trinder - @garrytrinder: Hey.
Kevin McDonnell - @kevmcdonk: Code, I've now got copilot code. Where do I go for things? And I think
Garry Trinder - @garrytrinder: Yeah. Yeah.
Kevin McDonnell - @kevmcdonk: I think there will be an element of that. I I I kinda I have no idea on this, but my feeling is that separate GitHub copilot app may be there, but generally people where they have code, because they have a a Microsoft Copilot license will start to do those things here. And I I think there will be different endpoints, but it will naturally it it's similar functionality and things will naturally flow to this. So something to watch. I I feel that there are many times where Microsoft does things and I kind of feel, why on earth have you done that? Why have you bought this extra thing? You're competing with yourself. I think here actually this is alignments. It's just that there are slightly different ones. So GitHub Copilot app If you've just got GitHub Copilot, you haven't got Microsoft Copilot, you're not going to want to start using code and and do that. So there is sense for it to be there, but effectively they're pulling all that capability in here as well. So if you have got Microsoft Copilot, great. Just leave GHCP alone.
Garry Trinder - @garrytrinder: Yeah, it that is something which I'm kind of going over in my head, like, okay, when would this be useful? What type of person would use it? what when would you use like I'm in in that camp of like I can use VS Code but I can also use Git CoPilot app. And I d end up using GitHub Copilot app quite a lot for the things that I'm doing.
Kevin McDonnell - @kevmcdonk: I do as well, yeah, I agree.
Garry Trinder - @garrytrinder: Yeah, and and it's like for those kind of tasks that I'm I'm doing, which is not necessarily code, it's it's kind of been quite good and like going through issues and pull requests and reviews and things. So I
Kevin McDonnell - @kevmcdonk: Yeah.
Garry Trinder - @garrytrinder: I think the one thing and and this is maybe something that we'll find out is around because it's in Copilot. There's the whole governance story behind this as well. So I think with code being in Copilot, there is this, you know, governance story around being able to control like what what capabilities you want code to have in your organization as well. because
Kevin McDonnell - @kevmcdonk: Yeah. Agree.
Garry Trinder - @garrytrinder: then it it's like, okay, you want to build something, dashboard or whatever, like Here's some MCP servers that you can connect to. We're gonna allow you to maybe use the local kind of sandbox, or maybe not. Like, or when you're using the local sandbox, what restrictions are you gonna have on there? And that can then be controlled from, you know, the the enterprise level. That's the way that I think that we should probably be thinking about this. I think at the moment it's very much like, hey, it's another place to create code. But I think that and I like I I'm sure we'll hear more about that as time goes on. But I think that's one of the things which I think okay, there you go then.
Kevin McDonnell - @kevmcdonk: Well I I think we have already, which is quite nice on that. So so what I love is it's just occurred to me, Microsoft has released something where they've thought about governance first. I know I was on with Michael Pisarek from Orchestry the other day on a webinar and he was complaining about that. They've actually done it. This is amazing. but I think we we didn't get much information. I it kind of occurred to me later that I'd made some assumptions about code and speaking with our Good friend Adal Eardley, and he was sh he was talking about a few bits, and I was like, hang on. so it does that. And it became clear because a few days later, Satch and Adela put this post up about the infinite SaaS factory, talking about Copilot's new OS, the new operating system. I I do feel we've heard various Microsoft things being called new operating systems, but putting that to one side. I I kind of agree with it. In in here, that Copilot is that launch pad. It's that what what did it used to call it? The UI for AI. It's where you go to. But by bringing the skills within this, bring bringing the plugins, Jeff Teeper announced 30 plus new copilot skills for dynamics 365, sales service and customer insights on there. We've got the copilot managed runtime, that governance they were talking about. And lots of details, but then at the same time, they announce hybrid intelligence. And I I went tick, tick, tick. I've heard some things about this. Is this connecting? Yes. So hybrid intelligence, for those not looking, is about effectively having windows with hybrid intelligence. It's about balancing that those cloud models with running local models within there. And you would you were talking there about that control and that realization that co-pilot code can run things locally with something that was announced at builds, the Microsoft Execution containers. So these containers means you can run some local code, but as a a central admin, you can define where can these things load. We we had Claw Pilot, all those stories of people going in and running clo core claw pilot. I'm not gonna call him out, but we had an MVP who seemed to have connected their their claw pilot to WhatsApp and it was suddenly started bombarding random messages from there. There wasn't that control that
Garry Trinder - @garrytrinder: That was a fun afternoon.
Kevin McDonnell - @kevmcdonk: that was an entertaining afternoon. on there. In fact, I was running the Scottish Summit workshop. I was like, there's a lot of messages come through. Why is everyone complaining? Uh-huh. But now with these containers, you can kind of say, I can allow you to access these local files, but not these ones. Well, I can allow you to talk to these endpoints, but not these ones. And admins have that control. And I love this statement here. These containers are going to integrate with agent 365 to control them. So you can almost deploy that local agent. And in the same way that you're setting those guardrails for your cloud agent, that's going to work on local agents as well. I'm really excited about this. I I think this is a great move. And I and I think that blend between cloud and local has been something that we've been waiting for for a while.
Garry Trinder - @garrytrinder: Definitely, yeah, because I think the kind of the viewpoint has been like, I can't run this in the cloud, I'll just run it on my own machine. And then it's completely open, right? Depending on what you what you're using. So I think having that flexibility to kind of come down to your local machine, use your local hardware. Like there's all sorts of advantages of running like local models. You know, privacy
Kevin McDonnell - @kevmcdonk: Lady.
Garry Trinder - @garrytrinder: is is a big one of those where you like maybe you want to process.
Kevin McDonnell - @kevmcdonk: Yes, sovereignty of data, yeah.
Garry Trinder - @garrytrinder: Exactly, right? It's it's on your machine, you know where the activity is taking place. so, you know, I I I I really liked that idea when we were talking about it, like we talked about Foundry Local, I think at one of the last builds, about, you know, being able to run those local models. You got other options like Olama, LM Studio, different places, but being able to control that, being able to say like the execution is gonna happen in this one place and I can define what goes in there, what goes out, what network it it can access. you know, all those things. So you can really tie it down is is where then I think we're gonna get a bit more of the the trust around using these models. Because like you say, you you hear lots of things in the news as well. And, you know Sometimes that's people doing crazy things and just not thinking about it. Like cost, like I'll
Kevin McDonnell - @kevmcdonk: Yeah. Yeah, well yeah, yeah.
Garry Trinder - @garrytrinder: I'll, you know, pseudo-run LLM kind of thing, right? Just give it access to everything.
Kevin McDonnell - @kevmcdonk: Yeah.
Garry Trinder - @garrytrinder: Like it's it's not a great idea. Yes, you can do it, but really you think about doing it and you hear that, you know, like, clock like this model drained my bank account. Well, you gave it access to your bank account, so you know,
Kevin McDonnell - @kevmcdonk: But but with this, administrators can put those blocks in. So it's not just about
Garry Trinder - @garrytrinder: Y yeah.
Kevin McDonnell - @kevmcdonk: trusting individuals. They can put those guardrails in centrally and have that roll out to any managed device, which is great.
Garry Trinder - @garrytrinder: Which is brilliant for for enterprises because you just want to get your job done. You don't want to be spending
Kevin McDonnell - @kevmcdonk: Yeah.
Garry Trinder - @garrytrinder: all this time configuring things and, you know, bits here, bits there. Just that you want it to run. So this is all part of that that
Kevin McDonnell - @kevmcdonk: Yeah. Don't want to take the risk.
Garry Trinder - @garrytrinder: story. Yeah, exactly. Yeah, yeah.
Kevin McDonnell - @kevmcdonk: And and I noticed moving on from this that they're talking about having the the A A I code flash. So I think that's a locally running model within there. and and kind of moving on to this routing on Windows. I haven't read through this in detail. It literally only came out yesterday, so I have haven't had much detail, but it effectively it's routing and we'll we'll talk a little bit more about hydrofusion, but it's deciding based on what you're trying to ad Based on what you're trying to do, which model to use. That's the hydrovision view. But now coming soon to GitHub Copilot app, GitHub Copilot CLI, and Visual Studio Code is having that work between local and cloud. So we'll automatically decide when I should use the local model. I'm doing something which will work with the ones here, versus, this activity needs a bit more power. Let me let me call some of the cloud models within the. Assuming you'll have control of certainly with with Hydro Fusion you could define when which kind of activities you wanted to use, which models, but you you've got a huge cost enhancement to that. A cost a performance improvements, assuming you've got a decent laptop. by the way, Microsoft's now selling really powerful laptops with Spark engines as well. So you could get a decent laptop to run all this and do a lot more locally as on there. But you've got that potential to to Balance where things happen, which is amazing.
Garry Trinder - @garrytrinder: Yeah, yeah. And and it's I've been talking about this for quite a while. It's the you know, using the model, the right model for the the the task at hand. And that is such a difficult thing to answer sometimes. A lot of it is kind of like experimentation. Like I I feel like a lot of people stick to a model because that's what they've used and that's
Kevin McDonnell - @kevmcdonk: Mm-hmm.
Garry Trinder - @garrytrinder: all been well and good. so they use it for everything. but you know, I think w being a bit more cost efficient, you know. dropping down through the like the family of models like so we see it in the anthropic side, we see it in the open AI side as well from Luna, Sol, Terra, Astra as well. You know, you've got all these different sizes. It's like where can you get away with using Luna for certain tasks where other times you might need that more deep reasoning kind of model. And I think it's really interesting because we've had auto mode in like Get up co pilot. But I mean, from my understanding of auto mode it's
Kevin McDonnell - @kevmcdonk: And and in Microsoft Copilot. Yeah. Yeah.
Garry Trinder - @garrytrinder: Yeah, exactly. It's it's based on kind of like your initial prompt. So it's kind of working out like, well, based on what you've put in there, how's how complex is this task? Whereas HydroFusion is the kind of like really an evolvement of that, so that it is kind of like, you know, using multiple models throughout that that whole process to to you know to work on things that that you that you want it to work on. So yeah, it's that's it's Definitely landed in VS Code, I think, because I saw the saw the message come up in the in the app. That might be inside us though. So you'll have to check.
Kevin McDonnell - @kevmcdonk: no, it's got it here. Try the research preview. it's available. So I'll put a link to this blog post out there
Garry Trinder - @garrytrinder: okay.
Kevin McDonnell - @kevmcdonk: as as well. do you know it's it it's funny you start to hear a phrase like, I had that a few weeks ago and then I heard it at the weekend. This phrase hill climbing. I I still
Garry Trinder - @garrytrinder: Ha ha ha.
Kevin McDonnell - @kevmcdonk: can't exactly remember what it means. but at some point I'm gonna have to go back and and understand this. I've I feel this is the next kind of AI phrase that. people pretend they know about and don't. So I'm I'm not gonna try and describe it or force you
Garry Trinder - @garrytrinder: Yeah.
Kevin McDonnell - @kevmcdonk: to unless you volunteer. No. Okay, excellent. We'll come
Garry Trinder - @garrytrinder: Yeah. Get that that word. Yeah. We'll we'll move on, I think.
Kevin McDonnell - @kevmcdonk: I I will come back to that one. I hadn't noticed it in the blog post, but I'm hearing that phrase come up an awful lot, which is interesting on there. So yeah, really like hydrofusion. I'm I'm pretty sure I was at the AgentCon events in London. They were talking about certainly with the what's it called the model router and I believe this has it as well that you can define when you want it to use different models on there and and I'm assuming that will pick up again with that capability between local and cloud as well. what one more thing just on that hybrid intelligence and I thought I'd lost it but I see it's down here as well. That new Copilot super app within there is also gonna get supercharged with those hybrid intelligence. So it will start to use your local context and use local models for Microsoft Copilot. So this isn't just a coding thing we're talking about here. This is every everyone who could have there. I mean I know you're a Mac fan, Gary, that's that's got local AI. I I'm guessing it potentially could start to use that. So you don't you know, we're not gonna suddenly get it the average user thinking of somewhere I can be read. Zoe, for example, wouldn't have to learn how to install OLAML or Windows ML or LM Studio. It will be built into the operating system itself and and know when to use the right task for using that local, which is, you know, that's what it should be really. really excited about that. not excited about these new PCs purely because they look fantastic and I can't afford a new PC at the moment.
Garry Trinder - @garrytrinder: Ha ha
Kevin McDonnell - @kevmcdonk: is the honest answer. But we'll we'll keep an eye out for those. now we touched we touched a bit on cost and that's something I want to drill into you because one of my favorite topics at the moment is Agent Three Six Five. and there were some really nice updates to that. A lot of conversations. I can't remember where it came out. I think it was the co-work side of usage based bidding and user licensed billing. I'm just about remembering what UBB and ULB is from that one. but a lot more capabilities coming with Agent Three Six Five to manage those costs. So where we where we're talking about that kind of hydrofusion and auto-ability with models to to kind of reduce your cost by using the right model at the right time, that's generally a a cheaper option. Similar thing with cost, making sure your agents are doing the right thing, that you've got a lot of control over your policy, that things are not overspending. If you've got your co work, that people are making that active decision on should I use cowork versus chat, based on how many how many credits they've got left. we're already at Avenard having very funny conversations about front loading the work we do at the beginning of the month because we get really nervous near the end of the month as to whether we have enough credits on. And it's it's becoming a proper conversation. It's great. And I I think the other announcement I loved in here is the ability to create spending policies in the cost management for different sets of models. So you could give the same person let's say 5,000, 10,000 credits on the top ones. So things like s what's it, Astra or Fable, but then maybe 20,000 on the others. So you've got a longer one. So you you have that ability to burst on those top models, but then you you hit that credit usage, then you can move to the other models or continue to do things that maybe don't need that higher capability. So really like this on there. It's gonna get people thinking.
Garry Trinder - @garrytrinder: Yeah, I think it's there's gonna need to be kind of a bit of a like I'm I'm I'm wanting to do this particular task and I feel like this model is needed because it's, you know, high reasoning and then it it justifies that. And then like how does someone in the business then go to IT to say, I I need this model and this policy? I think it thinking about it that way versus the kind of like, well, you've got everything and what do we take away? I think the other side of it is like you know, it's it's back to what we were saying before, like using the the model for the task at hand. And that could even be like from a a governance point of view is kind of like, well actually we'll put everyone using the same model and we'll figure out who is having an okay time with that for the things that they need and then we'll add in based on like different requests from different business units who are doing different types of work where, you know, we we might need the the the higher level models and where the the costs increase because then you're you're working a bit more intelligently with your with your cost pricing. So I think that's gonna be a big part of like the the other side of this is like, hey, we've got the technology, we've got the policies, but how do we actually implement them within our businesses as well?
Kevin McDonnell - @kevmcdonk: Yeah, that's gonna be a fun game. So but I think an important thing that admins need to start thinking about and preparing for with that. It was interesting. I I was doing a presentation to a load of our execs yesterday and trying to encourage them to use Copilot. Basically we had a set of labs for them to go through and someone asked the question, How do I know which model to use when? and I I think I might have been a bit tired because I was fairly blunt. I went, if you're asking that question, just use auto. You don't need to know. and it was slightly facetious, but also with it was kind of intentional as well. That you I I think we're getting to a good place where you don't need to understand the different models. Someone thankfully was a bit nice and said, Well, yes, I I kind of agree with Kevin, but also experiment. Try the different ones. So for your different tasks, try out the different ones, see see how they behave. And certainly if you're not getting results from the auto, then Try a higher model from that as well. which I think was probably a better answer to mine just, yeah, if you don't know, don't just use auto. You you shouldn't
Garry Trinder - @garrytrinder: Yeah.
Kevin McDonnell - @kevmcdonk: be allowed these nice toys. But I I I think it's good that we're getting to a point where you have the control to kind of say, I don't know about this, I will use auto. As you get to understand more, you also have that control to pick the right model as well. Hopefully. a few other nice updates. connect consumption to co-work value. So the consumption dashboard is now this is something that's gonna come from that VR insights world, will tell you where your credit's being used and what value they're bringing. I I'm I I like that Microsoft is thinking about value. I am maintaining a healthy cynicism about Actually, how they will get value out there. I I think we will see this story expand over the next six to twelve months. and I think it's important all organizations are are thinking about you know, if they're burning through a load of tokens, what are you actually getting from it? What is it helping your bottom line? What is it helping how people feel within there? I'm not sure a bubble chart will be the answer, if I'm brutally honest. So, One to keep an eye on on that. I think there was one thing there's a nice thing about being able to search for your agents. yes, this was two other things. One, agent management rules in agent three six five. So you can create a set of rules. For example, what I've seen an agent isn't being used for more than a month, block it. So you can actually start to have that life cycle of an agent. And I think these rules would expand over time. Really liking where that's going from Agent 365. And then this this seemed to pop up before the announcements, which I was very excited about.
Garry Trinder - @garrytrinder: Mm-hmm.
Kevin McDonnell - @kevmcdonk: Actually being able to control your MCP servers, plugins, skills, and connectors from one place. Agent 365 is becoming your skill library. And I think we there's another post that we'll put in there about the plugin registry, As well, which is all part of that. I think it was Rob Howard there bringing his golden magic to this, and bringing the plug-in access and nice details there. So really, really like this. I I think we've been asking for a skills registry or skills library from Microsoft for a while. This is now the one that's going to evolve and really excited to see this.
Garry Trinder - @garrytrinder: Yeah, so this plug in the plugin registry is something that I've been working on like recently. So I was helping with this announcement and one of the things that this is kind of changing is around th you think about extensibility really because previously if you were wanting to extend like m35 copilot chat you'd create an agent and then you would put mcp server api plugin in there to connect to like external serve services you put skills in there as well although that's in preview well no it's an agent builder so it's it's there yeah so it's it was
Kevin McDonnell - @kevmcdonk: We see Yeah, yeah.
Garry Trinder - @garrytrinder: it was in preview in the docs for some reason what I read so it shouldn't be but
Kevin McDonnell - @kevmcdonk: yes. Okay.
Garry Trinder - @garrytrinder: But it's an agent builder, so you can put skills in that. So the agent was the I call it the unit of distribution of those components, if you know what I mean. Like, hey, you've got a skill in there, you distribute it through an agent. Now with a plug-in, it kind of lifts things up a level. So a plugin can contain an agent, but it can also contain skills and an MCP server at the plugin level. And this is where kind of thinking about well. Do I need an agent or do I just need workflows and access to data?
Kevin McDonnell - @kevmcdonk: That is another show. Don't start answering that question yet, Gary.
Garry Trinder - @garrytrinder: And that is that is another show. But but this is the thing is that you're gonna see a lot more focus around plugins. It's not that agents are going away, it's not that all they've still got their place. But it's gonna be more focused towards plugins to skills, MCP servers, and agents. The the registry that you see there in the admin center in A365 is gonna be that view where you're gonna be able to kind of look at these plugin packages because it could contain you know, any number of skills or MCP servers or or whatever. And how you distribute that through your organization. Do you want to install that for everyone? Do you want to make it available? Do you want to block it? all those kind of things that you'd kind of expect. there is a I'm finding the challenge of the word plug-in because
Kevin McDonnell - @kevmcdonk: Mm-hmm.
Garry Trinder - @garrytrinder: we've had so plugins and connectors and gonna hopefully try and make this story a little bit easier for you because there's gonna be some changes. Like we had plugins in the past and they disappeared and they were in completely different use. Now plugins have come
Kevin McDonnell - @kevmcdonk: Thank goodness.
Garry Trinder - @garrytrinder: back. But now they've come back, right? And it's like, hang on, didn't we have these things before? We I've already seen plugins. Well no but this is plugins in a
Kevin McDonnell - @kevmcdonk: Yeah.
Garry Trinder - @garrytrinder: yeah, this is a this is a distribution mechanism. Think of it like a container of components that you can distribute in one go. So from an end user point of view, I think this is great because no longer it's like, I need this skill from here, I need to enable this MCP server or whatever. It's like everything's in a package. So you can, you know, you can distribute that out. Your users can just go, okay, I just enable that for my service or whatever. and you get everything activated, and then you can you can work with it. So I think that simplifies it definitely. But for From an admin point of view, I think it's providing that that layer of governance and the view across what's configured in across Copilot. And the other thing is that we talked right at the very beginning about the convergence of Copilot and all the different things. We talked about the home app, chat, and cowork, and autopilot and code. Plugins will be the mechanism to distribute across all those surfaces as well. So, like with an agent, it was just in chat. With this, you can go wider as well. So support's gonna roll out with that. There'll be more at Ignite coming. but yeah, that's kind of the the change that that's kind of happening there.
Kevin McDonnell - @kevmcdonk: And and maybe I was gonna say maybe we could do a deeper show on plugins. Maybe maybe that's a post-Ignite one. We can bring the latest info there. But looking forward to that. probably brings us on to the the the wrapping up the show. Ignites. I keep getting the dates wrong. 17th to 20th November. interestingly, are there still tickets available? That would Be an interesting thing to have a look at, but of course it's running too slowly when I want it from there as well. so I will try. Of course, my Wi-Fi suddenly decided to go slow. Hopefully, you can still hear me. Yeah, it does look like there are still tickets available for ignite if you can get over to San Francisco and find a decent cheap enough hotel room from there. But you can also watch entirely remotely as well and register for the digital version. So lots to look out for for there. we've got ahead of that October 27th to 29th in Vegas, Power Platform Community Conference. I I mean power platform's really dead, isn't it? It's going to be replaced by vibe coding. so be interesting to see what they think of that. and what's what comes from the discussions there. I I I'm fascinated about this power platform world and where where things are shifting with that. But that would be a great opportunity to go to and hear more about that. of course if you wanna meet up with Gary and I, the place really to go to is going to be Amsterdam, 30th November to 3rd of December for ESPC. Jeff Tieper's gonna be there. I think I saw Adam Harmet is gonna be there as well. certainly Vessa Caruana UC Royne as keynote speakers lots of great people from Microsoft, great MVP speakers, and us will be there speaking. So really looking forward to that one. I love ESPC, as I have said many times on this show before.
Garry Trinder - @garrytrinder: And then straight after that, fly with copilot. Don't forget that one.
Kevin McDonnell - @kevmcdonk: Yes, absolutely. must remember to get some sleep somewhere, basically. Has only just occurred to me I'm always shattered the week after ESPC. This could be a bad plan. But yeah, I I think a as a wrap up, there's lots happening. There's lots being announced. I think there's more coming as well. you know, you think this is the pre Ignite stuff, ignite's gonna be even bigger. So Keep up with Copilot Connection and we'll try a little bit and get more time together to share latest. any any last words from you, Gary at all?
Garry Trinder - @garrytrinder: yeah, I mean just what you're saying, ignite is gonna bring more changes. it's always gonna happen. Keep an eye on the message centers, get prepared for it. Like There is some big changes, so it'll be interesting to see how, you know, people pick these up and and then run with them as well. And no doubt there'll be more changes afterwards. But yeah, it's really exciting, I think. I think there's some really good moves that are happening. and yeah, if you are at these sessions as well, give us a shout and let's have a chat about it as well. But yeah, all good. On to the next one.
Kevin McDonnell - @kevmcdonk: Lovely. Thanks very much, Gary. Yeah. On to the next one. On to the next meeting. you gotta love things like this. Thank you, everyone. I hope you're well. Please do share if you've enjoyed this episode. drop us comment, feedback, share it with your friends, your colleagues, even your family. They love to hear about Copilot. Otherwise, thanks very much. Bye-bye all.
Garry Trinder - @garrytrinder: Hi everyone, my name is Gary Trinder. I'm a advocate at Microsoft. I work in the Microsoft Copilot Advocacy Team. So anything to do with copilot extensibility, I am all over that. So happy to be with you today. Happy to be with you, Kev, we've got plenty to talk about.
Kevin McDonnell - @kevmcdonk: Well, you might be until I say this. So you know from my t shirt behind me what a pedant I am. A advocate, Gary? A advocates? You you you were
Garry Trinder - @garrytrinder: Yeah well
Kevin McDonnell - @kevmcdonk: gonna say a developer advocate, then you panicked and went, I can't work out what I am anymore.
Garry Trinder - @garrytrinder: I know, I like what is a developer nowadays, right? Everyone's writing code. Sorry, agents are writing code. Yeah. So it it's not
Kevin McDonnell - @kevmcdonk: I'm a I'm a vibe code I'm a vibe code advocate.
Garry Trinder - @garrytrinder: that developers and are not important anymore. Absolutely not. I am a I am a dev, you know, I'm true dev, but like It's the world's changed, right? It's it's it's advocacy, it's it's co-pilot extensibility, whether that is you're you know writing code yourself, you get an agent to do it, or you're kind of clicking around as well. It's like, you know, everything that you need to do to get your job done, basically.
Kevin McDonnell - @kevmcdonk: I I'm laughing. I'm looking over in my notes and says it's been a while. You can tell from our intro already, can't you? Sorry.
Garry Trinder - @garrytrinder: Yeah, exactly. Six well, n not quite six months, but nearly.
Kevin McDonnell - @kevmcdonk: No. it it was builds, wasn't it? Was the last time you and I had a show
Garry Trinder - @garrytrinder: It was, yeah.
Kevin McDonnell - @kevmcdonk: and and apologies also the shows with Zoe have been a bit quiet. we've all been busy with life, work, and many other things on there. So sorry it's been a little bit quieter with the podcasts as well. been busy, Zoe, she has been up organising Scottish Summits. You can see I've got my lovely pink top from the Scottish Summit last weekend, had a fantastic Time up there. I was talking about Agent 365 as well as joining Sarah Fenner and Rex DeKoenig on doing a new speaker workshop. So a whole day on that. also had a very emotional session. It was only 20 minutes, but talking about bouncing back from failure. That had some incredible feedback from people. So looking forward to doing that again somewhere. and then hosting awards in the evening with a Kaylee, which it's fair to say my sore foot is still recovering from. But
Garry Trinder - @garrytrinder: Do we want to ask?
Kevin McDonnell - @kevmcdonk: Good good to get out in person. It was the Cayley. I I have various feet problems at the moment. And apparently,
Garry Trinder - @garrytrinder: Okay.
Kevin McDonnell - @kevmcdonk: even though I can hardly walk, I can still jump up and down and leap around in a Cayley. I had my my co-speaker on sheep herding with Agent 365, Adina Olive Watchkinson, which whose name I still can't say properly. yes, we we were dancing around like lunatics, along with other people as well. So it was it was a lot of fun. But it was good. And and you've been you've been out at in person events, Gary, which is a bit of a shocker.
Garry Trinder - @garrytrinder: I have yeah, yeah. So so we've had the Fly with Copilot event series that we've launched. we actually had first stop in Seattle, Redmond, Microsoft Offices, and then first one in Europe, which was Prague. So I went along to that. I covered SharePoint agents and all the good stuff coming into SharePoint on the day on the day it went G A, no less. So I feel like
Kevin McDonnell - @kevmcdonk: Gary had to share point. really?
Garry Trinder - @garrytrinder: you know I Giving everyone in the in the audience the you know the the the true kind of view of what SharePoint can do. And you're laughing, kind of like, you know, I was a bit like, I'm talking about SharePoint agents. I I I've I've worked with SharePoint for a long, long time, right? To the point where you kind of go, SharePoint, yeah, I know what that's about. And then you look back,
Kevin McDonnell - @kevmcdonk: You sorry, you didn't say loved you didn't say loved SharePoint for a long time though.
Garry Trinder - @garrytrinder: it's a love hate relationship, right? I think everyone who's worked with SharePoint or even developed on SharePoint will probably say that.
Kevin McDonnell - @kevmcdonk: Yeah.
Garry Trinder - @garrytrinder: But it was it was really cool to come back and kind of look at like SharePoint now, but with AI coming in was really interesting because the jobs that like I would have done back in the day as a consultant and like designing like a site layout, list, maybe even metadata, and having the site creation agent kind of do that for you and you're able to go through it in natural language and build out the structure of your site. I was like, that's like we've come a long way since the days of, you know, I remember
Kevin McDonnell - @kevmcdonk: Lady.
Garry Trinder - @garrytrinder: create having a diagram of all the the different things that we were gonna build and then you know that would take a while and then you go off and write the scripts to build it and and and all that now it's all in an agent and the the platform can build that out for for you and you know it I'm not saying it's gonna do everything for you but it gets you eighty ninety percent of the way and that's just so much easier like you know the whole we've created a SharePoint site, great, and it's just the default. Like, okay, what are we doing here? Like now you can get kind of past that. But yeah, it was it was really interesting kind of session and I think a lot of other people were surprised in the room as well. Like, yeah, SharePoint
Kevin McDonnell - @kevmcdonk: Yeah.
Garry Trinder - @garrytrinder: can do this now. This is pretty cool. so that was good.
Kevin McDonnell - @kevmcdonk: I I I loved it. Adam Harmitz put out a post of a few hidden gems that were missed and I did miss them. And he was saying that Copilot Search is coming inside SharePoint and OneDrive, which I I really like the Copilot search. It's really powerful. So I like that one. OneDrive is getting the same AI enrichment as well. and also getting new site analytics report, image generation right in line in right in libraries and real time metadata autofill within that. So Really nice. I'll put the link to that post 'cause there's some videos in the show notes as well.
Garry Trinder - @garrytrinder: the metadata one is just like, like how like back in the days of console, right? Well,
Kevin McDonnell - @kevmcdonk: Yeah.
Garry Trinder - @garrytrinder: metadata is ev and metadata now is more important than anything, right? Context. And having that metadata is really important. It was always the case if you'd set everything up, but
Kevin McDonnell - @kevmcdonk: Nah, co pilot does it for you.
Garry Trinder - @garrytrinder: Yeah, but you still need it, right? You need to still create, but it it's still it's
Kevin McDonnell - @kevmcdonk: No, I agree. I agree.
Garry Trinder - @garrytrinder: it it's an end user task. Put the document in, fill in all the metadata. What do people do? They put the document in, they forget about it. And then, you know, anything to make that easier and pull context like out of the documents, like, hey, I've got these columns, go make them into autofill columns, or actually, you know, I've just dumped a load of things in, go and go and extract information from these documents, do that right in SharePoint now. Like just click the copilot button and and and ask. I think that's really, really useful for like a an end user, just like information worker just working in a library like all day and and keeping that kind of curated. so that was like really interesting.
Kevin McDonnell - @kevmcdonk: Sorry sorry, in in the document library, not in the physical library, you mean the Possibly both, I guess. Yeah, yeah. Good place to go and get some work done. Yeah, not get distracted.
Garry Trinder - @garrytrinder: well I mean could be. Could be sh SharePoint in the library. Yeah. quiet at least.
Kevin McDonnell - @kevmcdonk: talking of not getting distracted.
Garry Trinder - @garrytrinder: yeah, yeah, true. We we kinda went into the SharePoint hole. Sorry about that.
Kevin McDonnell - @kevmcdonk: but we had some exciting news to share 'cause you were over in Prague for Fly with Copilot, and I believe the intention is to run some more around the world as well.
Garry Trinder - @garrytrinder: There is. so we have some more coming up. We've got one in Zurich, which is early November. we can share the details around that. We share details about the series so that you can see that when we are coming to your town, so to speak, or city. but we also have one planned for December. I'm gonna let you say this one, Kev. Go on.
Kevin McDonnell - @kevmcdonk: Yep. I was gonna say December the seventh, we are hoping to host in the Avenard Accenture offices, in London. So very excited to be bringing Fly with Copilot. hope we're gonna get Donna over there yourself. I think I'd well if I say it, then he has to do it. But I think Dan Laskovitz said he's gonna come over as well. so still in final planning details, we're gonna get some other MVPs along to Come and join us as well and yeah, hopefully you can get registration out soon and keep Donna away from that menu before I get in a lot of trouble internally.
Garry Trinder - @garrytrinder: Yeah, the the food menu we'll we'll add the the session the session menu. Yeah, yeah. The session menu
Kevin McDonnell - @kevmcdonk: The food menu, yes. Sorry, yes. That's allowed.
Garry Trinder - @garrytrinder: is is not just SharePoint. just to kind of s yeah say that it's it's not all SharePoint,
Kevin McDonnell - @kevmcdonk: Yeah.
Garry Trinder - @garrytrinder: so don't run away. we're covering the whole like whole copilot extensibility. So we'll be doing, you know, agent builder to work IQ to the the new things that are coming and through to agent three six five as well and all the So we're covering everything in these sessions.
Kevin McDonnell - @kevmcdonk: Yeah. And it and it's a very getting into the detail of the products. This isn't sort of high level kind of vision and strategy type slides. I might I might get in trouble
Garry Trinder - @garrytrinder: Well
Kevin McDonnell - @kevmcdonk: for this one. This isn't an Accenture presentation. This is going down into detail showing real demos and things, isn't it?
Garry Trinder - @garrytrinder: I mean, my view is I want as less less slides as possible. I want to get away from the slides, we want to get into demos, we to show you stuff, and that's what this is about is that even showing you things that we're doing as a team as well, and kind of giving you that view. and you know, if you have got some of these capabilities, come along with your laptop, kind of hack around, ask us questions as well whilst we're doing it. But yeah, we want it to be very much like, you know, we're showing you the product as it is. things that you can do with it as well. not just the yeah, slide by slide kind of approach.
Kevin McDonnell - @kevmcdonk: Yeah. And it's it's a few weeks post Ignite, so we'll have the latest updates and things from there, which will be great. So yeah. Really looking
Garry Trinder - @garrytrinder: It is. Yeah. It's gonna be a busy time.
Kevin McDonnell - @kevmcdonk: forward to that. And and it's a shame, 'cause there there hasn't been much news recently, has there? Yeah.
Garry Trinder - @garrytrinder: No, not all. Shall we go now?
Kevin McDonnell - @kevmcdonk: That's it, done. no, I think we're gonna kick off on I think the biggest news, it's always a a controversial statement to make, but especially when my machine's not sharing. No, no, no, no. Don't leave. So I decided to leave the studio. There we go. is the new copilot with home code and autopilot. What was affectionately known for a while as the super app. you did tell me earlier there's a proper name for it, which I couldn't see in here. I mean it's basically the copilot app, isn't it? But it's now got everything all in one place.
Garry Trinder - @garrytrinder: Yes. And and this is kind of like we were talking about it earlier. It's the progression of the the the great convergence, if you like. so you
Kevin McDonnell - @kevmcdonk: Mm-hmm.
Garry Trinder - @garrytrinder: could call it like one copilot where, you know, we had M35 copilot, we had the consumer copilot as well. you've probably already seen that. Like that's now into one app. so you just see co-pilot. and in M365 co-pilot, obviously, then there's a bit more of a conversion. because you know, we've had originally it was M365 copilot, then we had chat, cowork comes along, we've got new things like code, we've got autopilot as well. So it's really kind of bringing that vision together of rather than it being separate kind of systems that it's all in together and that it's all a lot more easier to to get into from an end user perspective. One brand, yeah.
Kevin McDonnell - @kevmcdonk: One brand, Microsoft Copilot, simple there. I I think there's been a little confusion. I've heard a little bit of noise around some of the mobile apps that there's now copilot legacy and that's disabled, but it
Garry Trinder - @garrytrinder: A yeah.
Kevin McDonnell - @kevmcdonk: I I I kind of get where people are complaining. on there I think we're getting to a good point where it'll all be merged. There's always a little bit of teething with these things as people get used to it and where to go. But it it's simplifying and I think simplifying is a good thing.
Garry Trinder - @garrytrinder: yeah, so we've seen kind of like the chat and the cowork kind of come together. Home
Kevin McDonnell - @kevmcdonk: Mm. Mm.
Garry Trinder - @garrytrinder: is now the the combination of chat and cowork together. so you've got like the the home and the the code and the autopilot. so you know, that kind of like chat experience kind of all comes through like home.
Kevin McDonnell - @kevmcdonk: So just just quickly for people, when when we say c that the home is chat plus co work, what
Garry Trinder - @garrytrinder: Yeah.
Kevin McDonnell - @kevmcdonk: it means is when you go and type, it will work out whether you're trying to use chat capabilities or whether there's actually benefit of that deeper power of cowork. But and I have had this validated, I'm fairly sure I can talk about this, it will always ask you first. I know I've had quite a few people that get nervous that, hang on, it's always gonna go to cowork and start burning through my credits. No, if it's going to use credits, it will always say, we think this will be useful in cowork. Would you like to go ahead and you ha you as a user have the choice on what you do with that, which I think is really important.
Garry Trinder - @garrytrinder: Mm. Yeah, it's things like automations, for example, that you have in cowork. those are obviously still using cowork. that's not through
Kevin McDonnell - @kevmcdonk: Mm-hmm. Yeah.
Garry Trinder - @garrytrinder: that's not through chat. So yeah, it it's kind of obviously this is rolling out as well. So the blog post is kind of a, you know, this is kind of what's what's coming. so it's kind of something to keep an eye out on as as things progress. So if you are in the Frontier program, obviously you'll see that first. so it you know, if you are looking at this And how this is going to change for end users as well, for your adoption and your champions programs as well. Then
Kevin McDonnell - @kevmcdonk: Yeah, good good point.
Garry Trinder - @garrytrinder: then keep an eye on that. Because I'm very conscious that we're announcing quite a lot of things and and
Kevin McDonnell - @kevmcdonk: Mm-hmm.
Garry Trinder - @garrytrinder: it's a lot of change. I think it's it's for the good, but it's all happening, it feels all at the same time. So I'm, you know, I'm not surprised that there'll be a few people like, okay, how many changes are coming and what's it going to end up like? But
Kevin McDonnell - @kevmcdonk: I was gonna say it's it's being announced. Some things are out now, some are coming soon, some are kind of
Garry Trinder - @garrytrinder: Yeah.
Kevin McDonnell - @kevmcdonk: private previews. So i it it's kind of almost like a bit post ignite. You get a similar thing where some are available straight away, some are coming through. It's similar story to that, really.
Garry Trinder - @garrytrinder: Yeah. Yeah, and it it's keep an eye on it because they say we've got Ignite coming up. There will be more kind of changes or coming or or you'll see the changes landing around that time as well. so yeah, like I say, keep an eye on it, keep a look in the message center as well. everything's been posted in there. No, I see lots of people sharing things on LinkedIn. So everyone seems to be dialed in on on those quite well. but yeah it's it's definitely something to keep an eye.
Kevin McDonnell - @kevmcdonk: and I think the other interesting bit, a new name, Office in Copilot. So it's going have that full power of Word Excel and PowerPoint within Copilot, which is interesting. So it's not, it's not just seeing that, you'll be able to kind of almost edit and work on things within the Copilot app, which I'm intrigued about how that will flow together. But I like it. It's kind of blending where where you kind of used to come in from Copilot and then move out into PowerPoint. Now you can go into PowerPoint or you can kind of Come in from PowerPoint, use a bit of co-pilot. It's it's bringing those things a bit closer together as well. You can see movement. then we've got autopilot. I think I'm I'm gonna jump around slightly because yeah, it may not always seem like it, but we do plan a flow to this, to these calls.
Garry Trinder - @garrytrinder: Hey.
Kevin McDonnell - @kevmcdonk: But autopilot, I think it's fair to you. The artist formerly known as Microsoft Scouts, on there. It's it's a little bit more than a rename, but certainly for those who've had the desktop scout, this is now moving into into the cloud. so it will run whether you have your desktop open or not. You will still have local capabilities, I believe from that through the app. So there's there's still gonna be some capability from there within it, but effectively it will do things On your behalf.
Garry Trinder - @garrytrinder: Mm. Yeah, it's it's an interesting thing. so a few members of my team have an autopilot. I don't just yet. I'm
Kevin McDonnell - @kevmcdonk: Yeah.
Garry Trinder - @garrytrinder: still waiting for mine. But it's like everyone now has their own like AI assistant that can join the chats and the meetings. And yeah, kind of we get some hilarity from from that because each each each AI assistant has their own obviously preferences and way to react to things. so yeah, we're we're trying this out at the moment. It's really interesting. playing around with it seeing where we can get kinda get the value from it. But I know folks in my team they they are running with this and it's becoming like the way that they work now. it's changed the way that they work. because like these are now things that you can delegate to. They're in the the org chart as well so they they show up as like a one of your reports if you like. so yeah it's it's it's a very different way to having and using assistance that we've done in the past. Because other people can interact with it.
Kevin McDonnell - @kevmcdonk: Yes. I don't know if we can talk about the chat group we've had with other people, the with their autopilot on, but
Garry Trinder - @garrytrinder: Probably not.
Kevin McDonnell - @kevmcdonk: it has been highly entertaining sort of seeing seeing how that reacts from there. And and I think you hit the nail on your head, there's gonna be a level of experimentation on what you delegate, how things actually work, et cetera, et cetera, which I I I think people were nervous about. We're gonna come back a little bit later to talk about costs and things like that. But I think that is the excuse me, the other factor of how you can control that will be an interesting point as well. the final block within the the super app is code. And and initially I I didn't really find that that we got that much information about codes when it was first announced. it it kind of says in here powered by the same underlying technology as GitHub Copilots. within there. So for those who've used the GitHub Copilot app, there's a lot of familiarity to to how that works within there. it it it's just it it's kind of talks about being able to describe an app tracker dashboard automation or workflow in natural language within there, which to me felt more something that kind of non-coders would be building. But it talked about being able to bring your GitHub Copilot license and bring that full code experience into there as well. So I am slightly intrigued to see what does come of this. The bit that that has evolved and we're gonna move on to in a sec, was it talks within there about code runs in a sandboxed environment and can be hosted securely within your tenant. And I love this. As someone who's seen a lot of clawed HTML apps go floating around the I are either kind of a hosted in Claude or hosted in OneDrive I've seen quite a bit and people emailing HTML files. People emailing HTML files. What has the world come to? this way you can manage those and put a level of governance around that, which I'm I'm really excited to sort of see more detail and get more info on that.
Garry Trinder - @garrytrinder: Yeah, it it's so code's been interesting. I've been having to play around with like an an early version and you can have this kind of like with the GitHub Copilot app, right? You've got the ability to do things locally, but you'll also have the ability to do things in the cloud as well. So you kind of have that, you know, I I'll just throw a a a prompt in or get me to build something and I can walk away from it. but yeah, it's using the the your local machine as well and having that kind of capability. So it's all sandboxed. But yeah, you it's it's GitHub Copilot. i in in Copilot. Like you can get it to build anything. It's
Kevin McDonnell - @kevmcdonk: Effectively, yeah.
Garry Trinder - @garrytrinder: it it's not like the examples that are given are like dashboards and things because it's like I think it is being aimed at the you know, the person who is been
Kevin McDonnell - @kevmcdonk: Average knowledge worker.
Garry Trinder - @garrytrinder: yeah, kind of like who's been using Claude code maybe. Just like, hey, I want to build this this this dashboard and then you have it and like, okay, what do we do with it? Like nah it's kind of it's in that story, but it is It is Git Co pilot. So it can build anything that you want. And I find this really interesting because like for me, straight away I was like, I want it to build like SharePoint framework apps. I want it to build a web part. Like I want it to deploy that web part. Like just go and do it. And and that's where I think that would be really interesting if, you know, over time like we have things in there that are just like, Hey, I can build things where I need code in this. for my organization as well.
Kevin McDonnell - @kevmcdonk: So I I I feel obliged to kind of pull across the kind of message of so hang on, I've got GitHub copilot, I can do things in VS
Garry Trinder - @garrytrinder: Hey.
Kevin McDonnell - @kevmcdonk: Code, I've now got copilot code. Where do I go for things? And I think
Garry Trinder - @garrytrinder: Yeah. Yeah.
Kevin McDonnell - @kevmcdonk: I think there will be an element of that. I I I kinda I have no idea on this, but my feeling is that separate GitHub copilot app may be there, but generally people where they have code, because they have a a Microsoft Copilot license will start to do those things here. And I I think there will be different endpoints, but it will naturally it it's similar functionality and things will naturally flow to this. So something to watch. I I feel that there are many times where Microsoft does things and I kind of feel, why on earth have you done that? Why have you bought this extra thing? You're competing with yourself. I think here actually this is alignments. It's just that there are slightly different ones. So GitHub Copilot app If you've just got GitHub Copilot, you haven't got Microsoft Copilot, you're not going to want to start using code and and do that. So there is sense for it to be there, but effectively they're pulling all that capability in here as well. So if you have got Microsoft Copilot, great. Just leave GHCP alone.
Garry Trinder - @garrytrinder: Yeah, it that is something which I'm kind of going over in my head, like, okay, when would this be useful? What type of person would use it? what when would you use like I'm in in that camp of like I can use VS Code but I can also use Git CoPilot app. And I d end up using GitHub Copilot app quite a lot for the things that I'm doing.
Kevin McDonnell - @kevmcdonk: I do as well, yeah, I agree.
Garry Trinder - @garrytrinder: Yeah, and and it's like for those kind of tasks that I'm I'm doing, which is not necessarily code, it's it's kind of been quite good and like going through issues and pull requests and reviews and things. So I
Kevin McDonnell - @kevmcdonk: Yeah.
Garry Trinder - @garrytrinder: I think the one thing and and this is maybe something that we'll find out is around because it's in Copilot. There's the whole governance story behind this as well. So I think with code being in Copilot, there is this, you know, governance story around being able to control like what what capabilities you want code to have in your organization as well. because
Kevin McDonnell - @kevmcdonk: Yeah. Agree.
Garry Trinder - @garrytrinder: then it it's like, okay, you want to build something, dashboard or whatever, like Here's some MCP servers that you can connect to. We're gonna allow you to maybe use the local kind of sandbox, or maybe not. Like, or when you're using the local sandbox, what restrictions are you gonna have on there? And that can then be controlled from, you know, the the enterprise level. That's the way that I think that we should probably be thinking about this. I think at the moment it's very much like, hey, it's another place to create code. But I think that and I like I I'm sure we'll hear more about that as time goes on. But I think that's one of the things which I think okay, there you go then.
Kevin McDonnell - @kevmcdonk: Well I I think we have already, which is quite nice on that. So so what I love is it's just occurred to me, Microsoft has released something where they've thought about governance first. I know I was on with Michael Pisarek from Orchestry the other day on a webinar and he was complaining about that. They've actually done it. This is amazing. but I think we we didn't get much information. I it kind of occurred to me later that I'd made some assumptions about code and speaking with our Good friend Adal Eardley, and he was sh he was talking about a few bits, and I was like, hang on. so it does that. And it became clear because a few days later, Satch and Adela put this post up about the infinite SaaS factory, talking about Copilot's new OS, the new operating system. I I do feel we've heard various Microsoft things being called new operating systems, but putting that to one side. I I kind of agree with it. In in here, that Copilot is that launch pad. It's that what what did it used to call it? The UI for AI. It's where you go to. But by bringing the skills within this, bring bringing the plugins, Jeff Teeper announced 30 plus new copilot skills for dynamics 365, sales service and customer insights on there. We've got the copilot managed runtime, that governance they were talking about. And lots of details, but then at the same time, they announce hybrid intelligence. And I I went tick, tick, tick. I've heard some things about this. Is this connecting? Yes. So hybrid intelligence, for those not looking, is about effectively having windows with hybrid intelligence. It's about balancing that those cloud models with running local models within there. And you would you were talking there about that control and that realization that co-pilot code can run things locally with something that was announced at builds, the Microsoft Execution containers. So these containers means you can run some local code, but as a a central admin, you can define where can these things load. We we had Claw Pilot, all those stories of people going in and running clo core claw pilot. I'm not gonna call him out, but we had an MVP who seemed to have connected their their claw pilot to WhatsApp and it was suddenly started bombarding random messages from there. There wasn't that control that
Garry Trinder - @garrytrinder: That was a fun afternoon.
Kevin McDonnell - @kevmcdonk: that was an entertaining afternoon. on there. In fact, I was running the Scottish Summit workshop. I was like, there's a lot of messages come through. Why is everyone complaining? Uh-huh. But now with these containers, you can kind of say, I can allow you to access these local files, but not these ones. Well, I can allow you to talk to these endpoints, but not these ones. And admins have that control. And I love this statement here. These containers are going to integrate with agent 365 to control them. So you can almost deploy that local agent. And in the same way that you're setting those guardrails for your cloud agent, that's going to work on local agents as well. I'm really excited about this. I I think this is a great move. And I and I think that blend between cloud and local has been something that we've been waiting for for a while.
Garry Trinder - @garrytrinder: Definitely, yeah, because I think the kind of the viewpoint has been like, I can't run this in the cloud, I'll just run it on my own machine. And then it's completely open, right? Depending on what you what you're using. So I think having that flexibility to kind of come down to your local machine, use your local hardware. Like there's all sorts of advantages of running like local models. You know, privacy
Kevin McDonnell - @kevmcdonk: Lady.
Garry Trinder - @garrytrinder: is is a big one of those where you like maybe you want to process.
Kevin McDonnell - @kevmcdonk: Yes, sovereignty of data, yeah.
Garry Trinder - @garrytrinder: Exactly, right? It's it's on your machine, you know where the activity is taking place. so, you know, I I I I really liked that idea when we were talking about it, like we talked about Foundry Local, I think at one of the last builds, about, you know, being able to run those local models. You got other options like Olama, LM Studio, different places, but being able to control that, being able to say like the execution is gonna happen in this one place and I can define what goes in there, what goes out, what network it it can access. you know, all those things. So you can really tie it down is is where then I think we're gonna get a bit more of the the trust around using these models. Because like you say, you you hear lots of things in the news as well. And, you know Sometimes that's people doing crazy things and just not thinking about it. Like cost, like I'll
Kevin McDonnell - @kevmcdonk: Yeah. Yeah, well yeah, yeah.
Garry Trinder - @garrytrinder: I'll, you know, pseudo-run LLM kind of thing, right? Just give it access to everything.
Kevin McDonnell - @kevmcdonk: Yeah.
Garry Trinder - @garrytrinder: Like it's it's not a great idea. Yes, you can do it, but really you think about doing it and you hear that, you know, like, clock like this model drained my bank account. Well, you gave it access to your bank account, so you know,
Kevin McDonnell - @kevmcdonk: But but with this, administrators can put those blocks in. So it's not just about
Garry Trinder - @garrytrinder: Y yeah.
Kevin McDonnell - @kevmcdonk: trusting individuals. They can put those guardrails in centrally and have that roll out to any managed device, which is great.
Garry Trinder - @garrytrinder: Which is brilliant for for enterprises because you just want to get your job done. You don't want to be spending
Kevin McDonnell - @kevmcdonk: Yeah.
Garry Trinder - @garrytrinder: all this time configuring things and, you know, bits here, bits there. Just that you want it to run. So this is all part of that that
Kevin McDonnell - @kevmcdonk: Yeah. Don't want to take the risk.
Garry Trinder - @garrytrinder: story. Yeah, exactly. Yeah, yeah.
Kevin McDonnell - @kevmcdonk: And and I noticed moving on from this that they're talking about having the the A A I code flash. So I think that's a locally running model within there. and and kind of moving on to this routing on Windows. I haven't read through this in detail. It literally only came out yesterday, so I have haven't had much detail, but it effectively it's routing and we'll we'll talk a little bit more about hydrofusion, but it's deciding based on what you're trying to ad Based on what you're trying to do, which model to use. That's the hydrovision view. But now coming soon to GitHub Copilot app, GitHub Copilot CLI, and Visual Studio Code is having that work between local and cloud. So we'll automatically decide when I should use the local model. I'm doing something which will work with the ones here, versus, this activity needs a bit more power. Let me let me call some of the cloud models within the. Assuming you'll have control of certainly with with Hydro Fusion you could define when which kind of activities you wanted to use, which models, but you you've got a huge cost enhancement to that. A cost a performance improvements, assuming you've got a decent laptop. by the way, Microsoft's now selling really powerful laptops with Spark engines as well. So you could get a decent laptop to run all this and do a lot more locally as on there. But you've got that potential to to Balance where things happen, which is amazing.
Garry Trinder - @garrytrinder: Yeah, yeah. And and it's I've been talking about this for quite a while. It's the you know, using the model, the right model for the the the task at hand. And that is such a difficult thing to answer sometimes. A lot of it is kind of like experimentation. Like I I feel like a lot of people stick to a model because that's what they've used and that's
Kevin McDonnell - @kevmcdonk: Mm-hmm.
Garry Trinder - @garrytrinder: all been well and good. so they use it for everything. but you know, I think w being a bit more cost efficient, you know. dropping down through the like the family of models like so we see it in the anthropic side, we see it in the open AI side as well from Luna, Sol, Terra, Astra as well. You know, you've got all these different sizes. It's like where can you get away with using Luna for certain tasks where other times you might need that more deep reasoning kind of model. And I think it's really interesting because we've had auto mode in like Get up co pilot. But I mean, from my understanding of auto mode it's
Kevin McDonnell - @kevmcdonk: And and in Microsoft Copilot. Yeah. Yeah.
Garry Trinder - @garrytrinder: Yeah, exactly. It's it's based on kind of like your initial prompt. So it's kind of working out like, well, based on what you've put in there, how's how complex is this task? Whereas HydroFusion is the kind of like really an evolvement of that, so that it is kind of like, you know, using multiple models throughout that that whole process to to you know to work on things that that you that you want it to work on. So yeah, it's that's it's Definitely landed in VS Code, I think, because I saw the saw the message come up in the in the app. That might be inside us though. So you'll have to check.
Kevin McDonnell - @kevmcdonk: no, it's got it here. Try the research preview. it's available. So I'll put a link to this blog post out there
Garry Trinder - @garrytrinder: okay.
Kevin McDonnell - @kevmcdonk: as as well. do you know it's it it's funny you start to hear a phrase like, I had that a few weeks ago and then I heard it at the weekend. This phrase hill climbing. I I still
Garry Trinder - @garrytrinder: Ha ha ha.
Kevin McDonnell - @kevmcdonk: can't exactly remember what it means. but at some point I'm gonna have to go back and and understand this. I've I feel this is the next kind of AI phrase that. people pretend they know about and don't. So I'm I'm not gonna try and describe it or force you
Garry Trinder - @garrytrinder: Yeah.
Kevin McDonnell - @kevmcdonk: to unless you volunteer. No. Okay, excellent. We'll come
Garry Trinder - @garrytrinder: Yeah. Get that that word. Yeah. We'll we'll move on, I think.
Kevin McDonnell - @kevmcdonk: I I will come back to that one. I hadn't noticed it in the blog post, but I'm hearing that phrase come up an awful lot, which is interesting on there. So yeah, really like hydrofusion. I'm I'm pretty sure I was at the AgentCon events in London. They were talking about certainly with the what's it called the model router and I believe this has it as well that you can define when you want it to use different models on there and and I'm assuming that will pick up again with that capability between local and cloud as well. what one more thing just on that hybrid intelligence and I thought I'd lost it but I see it's down here as well. That new Copilot super app within there is also gonna get supercharged with those hybrid intelligence. So it will start to use your local context and use local models for Microsoft Copilot. So this isn't just a coding thing we're talking about here. This is every everyone who could have there. I mean I know you're a Mac fan, Gary, that's that's got local AI. I I'm guessing it potentially could start to use that. So you don't you know, we're not gonna suddenly get it the average user thinking of somewhere I can be read. Zoe, for example, wouldn't have to learn how to install OLAML or Windows ML or LM Studio. It will be built into the operating system itself and and know when to use the right task for using that local, which is, you know, that's what it should be really. really excited about that. not excited about these new PCs purely because they look fantastic and I can't afford a new PC at the moment.
Garry Trinder - @garrytrinder: Ha ha
Kevin McDonnell - @kevmcdonk: is the honest answer. But we'll we'll keep an eye out for those. now we touched we touched a bit on cost and that's something I want to drill into you because one of my favorite topics at the moment is Agent Three Six Five. and there were some really nice updates to that. A lot of conversations. I can't remember where it came out. I think it was the co-work side of usage based bidding and user licensed billing. I'm just about remembering what UBB and ULB is from that one. but a lot more capabilities coming with Agent Three Six Five to manage those costs. So where we where we're talking about that kind of hydrofusion and auto-ability with models to to kind of reduce your cost by using the right model at the right time, that's generally a a cheaper option. Similar thing with cost, making sure your agents are doing the right thing, that you've got a lot of control over your policy, that things are not overspending. If you've got your co work, that people are making that active decision on should I use cowork versus chat, based on how many how many credits they've got left. we're already at Avenard having very funny conversations about front loading the work we do at the beginning of the month because we get really nervous near the end of the month as to whether we have enough credits on. And it's it's becoming a proper conversation. It's great. And I I think the other announcement I loved in here is the ability to create spending policies in the cost management for different sets of models. So you could give the same person let's say 5,000, 10,000 credits on the top ones. So things like s what's it, Astra or Fable, but then maybe 20,000 on the others. So you've got a longer one. So you you have that ability to burst on those top models, but then you you hit that credit usage, then you can move to the other models or continue to do things that maybe don't need that higher capability. So really like this on there. It's gonna get people thinking.
Garry Trinder - @garrytrinder: Yeah, I think it's there's gonna need to be kind of a bit of a like I'm I'm I'm wanting to do this particular task and I feel like this model is needed because it's, you know, high reasoning and then it it justifies that. And then like how does someone in the business then go to IT to say, I I need this model and this policy? I think it thinking about it that way versus the kind of like, well, you've got everything and what do we take away? I think the other side of it is like you know, it's it's back to what we were saying before, like using the the model for the task at hand. And that could even be like from a a governance point of view is kind of like, well actually we'll put everyone using the same model and we'll figure out who is having an okay time with that for the things that they need and then we'll add in based on like different requests from different business units who are doing different types of work where, you know, we we might need the the the higher level models and where the the costs increase because then you're you're working a bit more intelligently with your with your cost pricing. So I think that's gonna be a big part of like the the other side of this is like, hey, we've got the technology, we've got the policies, but how do we actually implement them within our businesses as well?
Kevin McDonnell - @kevmcdonk: Yeah, that's gonna be a fun game. So but I think an important thing that admins need to start thinking about and preparing for with that. It was interesting. I I was doing a presentation to a load of our execs yesterday and trying to encourage them to use Copilot. Basically we had a set of labs for them to go through and someone asked the question, How do I know which model to use when? and I I think I might have been a bit tired because I was fairly blunt. I went, if you're asking that question, just use auto. You don't need to know. and it was slightly facetious, but also with it was kind of intentional as well. That you I I think we're getting to a good place where you don't need to understand the different models. Someone thankfully was a bit nice and said, Well, yes, I I kind of agree with Kevin, but also experiment. Try the different ones. So for your different tasks, try out the different ones, see see how they behave. And certainly if you're not getting results from the auto, then Try a higher model from that as well. which I think was probably a better answer to mine just, yeah, if you don't know, don't just use auto. You you shouldn't
Garry Trinder - @garrytrinder: Yeah.
Kevin McDonnell - @kevmcdonk: be allowed these nice toys. But I I I think it's good that we're getting to a point where you have the control to kind of say, I don't know about this, I will use auto. As you get to understand more, you also have that control to pick the right model as well. Hopefully. a few other nice updates. connect consumption to co-work value. So the consumption dashboard is now this is something that's gonna come from that VR insights world, will tell you where your credit's being used and what value they're bringing. I I'm I I like that Microsoft is thinking about value. I am maintaining a healthy cynicism about Actually, how they will get value out there. I I think we will see this story expand over the next six to twelve months. and I think it's important all organizations are are thinking about you know, if they're burning through a load of tokens, what are you actually getting from it? What is it helping your bottom line? What is it helping how people feel within there? I'm not sure a bubble chart will be the answer, if I'm brutally honest. So, One to keep an eye on on that. I think there was one thing there's a nice thing about being able to search for your agents. yes, this was two other things. One, agent management rules in agent three six five. So you can create a set of rules. For example, what I've seen an agent isn't being used for more than a month, block it. So you can actually start to have that life cycle of an agent. And I think these rules would expand over time. Really liking where that's going from Agent 365. And then this this seemed to pop up before the announcements, which I was very excited about.
Garry Trinder - @garrytrinder: Mm-hmm.
Kevin McDonnell - @kevmcdonk: Actually being able to control your MCP servers, plugins, skills, and connectors from one place. Agent 365 is becoming your skill library. And I think we there's another post that we'll put in there about the plugin registry, As well, which is all part of that. I think it was Rob Howard there bringing his golden magic to this, and bringing the plug-in access and nice details there. So really, really like this. I I think we've been asking for a skills registry or skills library from Microsoft for a while. This is now the one that's going to evolve and really excited to see this.
Garry Trinder - @garrytrinder: Yeah, so this plug in the plugin registry is something that I've been working on like recently. So I was helping with this announcement and one of the things that this is kind of changing is around th you think about extensibility really because previously if you were wanting to extend like m35 copilot chat you'd create an agent and then you would put mcp server api plugin in there to connect to like external serve services you put skills in there as well although that's in preview well no it's an agent builder so it's it's there yeah so it's it was
Kevin McDonnell - @kevmcdonk: We see Yeah, yeah.
Garry Trinder - @garrytrinder: it was in preview in the docs for some reason what I read so it shouldn't be but
Kevin McDonnell - @kevmcdonk: yes. Okay.
Garry Trinder - @garrytrinder: But it's an agent builder, so you can put skills in that. So the agent was the I call it the unit of distribution of those components, if you know what I mean. Like, hey, you've got a skill in there, you distribute it through an agent. Now with a plug-in, it kind of lifts things up a level. So a plugin can contain an agent, but it can also contain skills and an MCP server at the plugin level. And this is where kind of thinking about well. Do I need an agent or do I just need workflows and access to data?
Kevin McDonnell - @kevmcdonk: That is another show. Don't start answering that question yet, Gary.
Garry Trinder - @garrytrinder: And that is that is another show. But but this is the thing is that you're gonna see a lot more focus around plugins. It's not that agents are going away, it's not that all they've still got their place. But it's gonna be more focused towards plugins to skills, MCP servers, and agents. The the registry that you see there in the admin center in A365 is gonna be that view where you're gonna be able to kind of look at these plugin packages because it could contain you know, any number of skills or MCP servers or or whatever. And how you distribute that through your organization. Do you want to install that for everyone? Do you want to make it available? Do you want to block it? all those kind of things that you'd kind of expect. there is a I'm finding the challenge of the word plug-in because
Kevin McDonnell - @kevmcdonk: Mm-hmm.
Garry Trinder - @garrytrinder: we've had so plugins and connectors and gonna hopefully try and make this story a little bit easier for you because there's gonna be some changes. Like we had plugins in the past and they disappeared and they were in completely different use. Now plugins have come
Kevin McDonnell - @kevmcdonk: Thank goodness.
Garry Trinder - @garrytrinder: back. But now they've come back, right? And it's like, hang on, didn't we have these things before? We I've already seen plugins. Well no but this is plugins in a
Kevin McDonnell - @kevmcdonk: Yeah.
Garry Trinder - @garrytrinder: yeah, this is a this is a distribution mechanism. Think of it like a container of components that you can distribute in one go. So from an end user point of view, I think this is great because no longer it's like, I need this skill from here, I need to enable this MCP server or whatever. It's like everything's in a package. So you can, you know, you can distribute that out. Your users can just go, okay, I just enable that for my service or whatever. and you get everything activated, and then you can you can work with it. So I think that simplifies it definitely. But for From an admin point of view, I think it's providing that that layer of governance and the view across what's configured in across Copilot. And the other thing is that we talked right at the very beginning about the convergence of Copilot and all the different things. We talked about the home app, chat, and cowork, and autopilot and code. Plugins will be the mechanism to distribute across all those surfaces as well. So, like with an agent, it was just in chat. With this, you can go wider as well. So support's gonna roll out with that. There'll be more at Ignite coming. but yeah, that's kind of the the change that that's kind of happening there.
Kevin McDonnell - @kevmcdonk: And and maybe I was gonna say maybe we could do a deeper show on plugins. Maybe maybe that's a post-Ignite one. We can bring the latest info there. But looking forward to that. probably brings us on to the the the wrapping up the show. Ignites. I keep getting the dates wrong. 17th to 20th November. interestingly, are there still tickets available? That would Be an interesting thing to have a look at, but of course it's running too slowly when I want it from there as well. so I will try. Of course, my Wi-Fi suddenly decided to go slow. Hopefully, you can still hear me. Yeah, it does look like there are still tickets available for ignite if you can get over to San Francisco and find a decent cheap enough hotel room from there. But you can also watch entirely remotely as well and register for the digital version. So lots to look out for for there. we've got ahead of that October 27th to 29th in Vegas, Power Platform Community Conference. I I mean power platform's really dead, isn't it? It's going to be replaced by vibe coding. so be interesting to see what they think of that. and what's what comes from the discussions there. I I I'm fascinated about this power platform world and where where things are shifting with that. But that would be a great opportunity to go to and hear more about that. of course if you wanna meet up with Gary and I, the place really to go to is going to be Amsterdam, 30th November to 3rd of December for ESPC. Jeff Tieper's gonna be there. I think I saw Adam Harmet is gonna be there as well. certainly Vessa Caruana UC Royne as keynote speakers lots of great people from Microsoft, great MVP speakers, and us will be there speaking. So really looking forward to that one. I love ESPC, as I have said many times on this show before.
Garry Trinder - @garrytrinder: And then straight after that, fly with copilot. Don't forget that one.
Kevin McDonnell - @kevmcdonk: Yes, absolutely. must remember to get some sleep somewhere, basically. Has only just occurred to me I'm always shattered the week after ESPC. This could be a bad plan. But yeah, I I think a as a wrap up, there's lots happening. There's lots being announced. I think there's more coming as well. you know, you think this is the pre Ignite stuff, ignite's gonna be even bigger. So Keep up with Copilot Connection and we'll try a little bit and get more time together to share latest. any any last words from you, Gary at all?
Garry Trinder - @garrytrinder: yeah, I mean just what you're saying, ignite is gonna bring more changes. it's always gonna happen. Keep an eye on the message centers, get prepared for it. Like There is some big changes, so it'll be interesting to see how, you know, people pick these up and and then run with them as well. And no doubt there'll be more changes afterwards. But yeah, it's really exciting, I think. I think there's some really good moves that are happening. and yeah, if you are at these sessions as well, give us a shout and let's have a chat about it as well. But yeah, all good. On to the next one.
Kevin McDonnell - @kevmcdonk: Lovely. Thanks very much, Gary. Yeah. On to the next one. On to the next meeting. you gotta love things like this. Thank you, everyone. I hope you're well. Please do share if you've enjoyed this episode. drop us comment, feedback, share it with your friends, your colleagues, even your family. They love to hear about Copilot. Otherwise, thanks very much. Bye-bye all.
