MS Build Review: The Future is Copilot

Microsoft’s Vision for AI-Powered Business

Microsoft Build 2024 showcased the transformative power of MS Copilot, highlighting its evolution into a central tool for businesses to safely and securely integrate AI into their operations. The conference emphasized a future where Copilot seamlessly interacts with proprietary data, driving intelligent automation and decision-making.

Key Announcements: Empowering Businesses with AI

Microsoft unveiled a suite of enhancements designed to make Copilot more versatile, secure, and adaptable:

• Copilot and Microsoft Fabric: Better Together A deep integration with Microsoft Fabric, a unified analytics platform, enabling Copilot to securely access and analyze data from diverse sources, breaking down silos and empowering data-driven decisions.
• Enhanced Data Security and Accessibility New features ensure businesses can confidently extend Copilot’s capabilities to their own data and processes, maintaining strict data protection standards.
• Copilot as an Autonomous Agent Coming soon: Copilot will be able to act autonomously, responding to events and triggers within business workflows, making decisions and taking actions on behalf of users.

In this article, join us as we delve into the new extensibility model for Copilot, exploring how businesses can leverage its capabilities to create custom AI solutions tailored to their unique needs.

The New Extensibility Model: Unlocking Copilot’s Potential

Build’s core message centered on the vastly improved ways developers and businesses can customize and extend Copilot.

The new extensibility model offers a range of possibilities, from indexing unstructured data to creating custom AI functionality. As seen in the slide below, these enhancements unlock Copilot’s potential to adapt to diverse business needs.

This slide from Microsoft Build highlights the foundational elements of Copilot extensibility, ranging from indexing with vector search, to plugins for read/write data interoperability, to custom AI functionality. These enhancements unlock Copilot’s potential to adapt to diverse business needs.

Here’s a closer look at the key components of the new extensibility model:

• Indexing with Graph Connectors: Enables Copilot to efficiently search and utilize business data from vast, disorganized data sources such as document repositories, knowledge bases, intranet sites, content management systems, and more. This feature is powered by vector search, allowing Copilot to understand and retrieve relevant information with greater understanding than traditional keyword-based search.

This slide from Microsoft Build outlines scenarios where Copilot Graph Connectors can be used to index and search unstructured data. By leveraging vector search, Copilot can efficiently retrieve relevant information from vast, disorganized data sources, enhancing its capabilities for rapid retrieval of relevant business data.

• Standard and Custom Plugins: A flexible framework for creating plugins that allow Copilot to read and write structured data from relational business systems (e.g., databases, CRMs). Plugins are best used to enhance Copilot’s capabilities with real-time data, provide write-back functionality, and integrate with external systems.

This slide from Microsoft Build illustrates how Copilot securely interacts with various data sources through plugins. Plugins enable Copilot to read and write structured data from business systems, enhancing its capabilities with your own business data in flexible ways.

• Declarative Copilots: Create custom LLM agents (like OpenAI’s custom GPTs) with unique knowledge bases and personalities, tailored to specific business needs.

This slide from Microsoft Build outlines scenarios and benefits of using declarative copilots to address specific business challenges. Declarative copilots can be tailored to specific use cases, such as customer service, sales, or HR, providing specialized AI capabilities.

• Custom AI Functionality: Businesses can now integrate their own AI models into Copilot for highly specialized solutions. This includes connecting external data sources to Azure OpenAI Service and leveraging advanced models like GPT-4 and frameworks like LangChain.

This slide from Microsoft Build highlights the benefits of using custom engine copilots to integrate your own AI models into Copilot. Custom engine copilots enable businesses to create highly specialized AI solutions tailored to their unique needs, with total control over UX, AI models, data sources, and more.

The Bottom Line

Microsoft Build 2024 painted a compelling picture of the future of AI in business. MS Copilot, bolstered by Microsoft Fabric, is poised to revolutionize how organizations leverage AI, making it more accessible, secure, and tailored to individual workflows. The new extensibility model opens up a world of possibilities for businesses to customize Copilot to their unique needs, driving intelligent automation and decision-making.

Learn More

• For deeper insights from MS Build, explore the Microsoft Build Book of News.
• For greater details on the Copilot extensibility model discussed at MS Build 2024, see the presentation “Developer’s Guide to Customizing Microsoft Copilot” on the Microsoft Build website
• To learn more about how the Proactive Technology Management Fusion Development team is transforming businesses with AI, the Microsoft Fabric cloud data platform, and paperless office hyperautomation, visit our landing page.

Contact Us

At Proactive Technology Management, we’re excited to help you explore the possibilities of AI and automation for your business. Contact us to schedule a free consultation in which we will discuss how we can help you leverage the power of Microsoft Copilot and the Microsoft Fabric cloud data platform to transform your business operations in the era of generative AI.