Microsoft Ignite 2023 – my reflections

This week Microsoft gathered what I can imagine to be an enthusiastic audience to attend Microsoft Ignite in-person in Seattle. In this world of possibilities the event could also be seen online, live as well as on-demand. Not all, but lots of session. In this post I’ll let you in on my reflections after watching on-demand content from the event.

Before we look at highlights from my perspective, here’s the link to the Microsoft Ignite 2023 Book of News. If you take a closer look to it from a BizApps perspective, there’s not much under the Power Platform chapter, in there you’ll find one menu item only, related to Power Pages. There is a whole other chapter though, where BizApps related functionality is included and this chapter has a main headline called… Microsoft Copilot!

Did someone say copilot?!

Looking at the Session Catalog before the event, even if you filtered on Business Applications, most sessions had the word AI in it, or copilot. The opening keynote was called Microsoft Ignite Opening, but it could have had a name with copilot or AI in it. Instead we can see that in the description. 😉 “Satya Nadella will share how Microsoft is creating new opportunity across our platforms in this new era of AI”.

Yes, copilot was mentioned. A lot. Next year perhaps Microsoft should invent “Microsoft Copilot Conference 2024”. This could almost have been the 2023 edition. Speakers were featured with t-shirts with a new logo on it. Logo for what? Microsoft Copilot Studio!

The age of copilots Satya Nadella summarized the opening keynote.

Microsoft Copilot Studio

At Microsoft Ignite 2019, Power Virtual Agents was introduced, I wrote about it here. Fast-forwarding four years and it has evolved into Microsoft Copilot Studio. We now say bye bye to Power Virtual Agents and hello to this newly re-imagined product.

During the main keynote, Satya Nadella talked about Power Platform and how Copilot Studio has come from the “previous generation of applications that they built and the app platform” and that Copilot Studio compared to Power Platform will be the more or equal for the copilot era. Microsoft Copilot Studio was not only announced as new, it was also announced as General Available.

Announcement: Announcing Microsoft Copilot Studio: Customize Copilot for Microsoft 365 and build your own standalone copilots
Announcement on the PVA blog: Microsoft Power Virtual Agents, now part of Microsoft Copilot Studio | Microsoft Power Virtual Agents
Microsoft Learn Start page: Microsoft Copilot Studio documentation
Try it out: aka.ms/CopilotStudio

Microsoft Copilot Studio vs. Copilot in Power Platform

Several pictures explaining copilot in the Microsoft stack of technologies could be seen throughout Microsoft Ignite. One such picture was the one below.

We have Microsoft Copilot Studio on top of other underlying services from Microsoft. On top of the Copilot Studio we have copilots for different areas, such as Microsoft 365 Copilots and Dynamics & Power Copilots. Power Apps and Power Automate being a part of the Power Platform and the CE apps (Sales, Service) built on top of Power Platform. There are other Microsoft Copilots and we can now extend with our own Custom Copilots as well.

Examples of a session combining Power Platform and Copilot: Accelerate impact with AI-powered low code tools. There are many more, this is just one of them.

As usual the official Microsoft blogs summarized the announcements, e.g. in the posts: Accelerate Copilot extensibility and Power Apps creation with Microsoft Dataverse, Introducing new Copilot experiences to boost productivity and elevate customer experiences across the organization, The next evolution of Copilot in Power Automate and Power Apps accelerates the shift toward modern, AI-infused apps with governance at scale.

And a little reminder not to miss the sub chapters under Microsoft Copilot in the Microsoft Ignite 2023 Book of News. There you have some of the features for “Dynamics and Power Copilots”.

The above mentioned session combining Power Platform and Copilot also described terminology and gave explanations, “AI behind the scenes”. The below Generative AI Glossary was presented.

Copilot plugins

The opening keynote showed a list of companies who already build copilot plugins. Then I watched the session Transform copilot development with Microsoft Copilot Studio and found one of the demos extra interesting. It was Gary Pretty (Principal Product Manager for PVA and Conversational AI at Microsoft) showing us an example where Holland America Line uses Copilot Studio to build a custom copilot that can act as an assistant on their websites, to help users to book cruises. This was extra interesting for me, since I’ve been involved in a similar proof of concept, but with Power Virtual Agents.

The generative answers capability was showcased. From showing how a copilot can use a website in the background to answer questions. Combined with own created topics (if you’re familiar with PVA this will not be new to you). To using Plugin actions. Add a connector to a certain API/data source and use Generative Actions on the Generative AI page and your chat bot copilot will use the power of GPT and Azure Open AI to pick the correct plugin depending on your user’s question, excecute the plugin and provide an answer.

In the “Dynamic Chain Log” one can see what’s going on in the background. It was shown how the connector/API was missing information in the request (booking number) and the chat bot copilot asked the user for the booking number and then went looking for the correct information calling the API and included the booking number.

Then a next question from the user, and based on the previous conversation, the correct plugin was chosen.

This same session also demoed how to create copilots that extends the AI functionality in Dynamics 365 CE apps. It was showcased how one can add a Power Platform component as an AI plugin. Add fields (columns) from Dataverse, enable and use the plugin.

Pages have been added to Microsoft Learn describing how to create and configure copilots.

More copilot

Another session I watched was Microsoft Cloud in the era of AI. Reusing pictures from the opening keynote copilot played a part here as well.

Another name change by the way and more copilot: Bing chat is now Copilot. “Bing Chat and Bing Chat Enterprise will now simply become Microsoft Copilot“. https://aka.ms/BingIgnite
Announcement: https://blogs.microsoft.com/blog/2023/09/21/announcing-microsoft-copilot-your-everyday-ai-companion/.

Project Sophia

This caught my attention since it was described as a new business app and I work with Microsoft Business Applications. Sounds like this could be of interest for me and my customers… The fact that it was presented by Julie Strauss was also a part of grabbing my attention, since Julie in the past have held several sessions often with BizApps and developer focused content which I have found interesting.  

So, what is this Project Sophia?! Described my Julie Strauss as below.

Its purpose is to unify data from internal and external sources and powered by large language models visualize outcomes and actions. It’s also described as a new AI-first business application. It is mentioned that we should see it as a complement to the other business applications and related AI tools. A quote from Julie Strauss:

“We simply re-imagined what a business application could look like when we are thinking AI first using the power of generative AI to its fullest.”

It’s mentioned that it is in its very early days (in public preview) and the data sources currently supported are uploaded local files, such as Excel, CSV, and PDF. However, it’s also mentioned that the real power of Sophia will start to emerge during the next phase where Microsoft will be supporting more data sources. Such as Dataverse and it sounds like connectors as well since it’s mentioned “over the 1,000 data sources we support access to through the Power Platform”.

Think about your Dataverse data and the data model for Dynamics 365 Sales or a custom Dataverse data model. Combined with data from F&O (ok I know we have dual write and other features, but this is next level and combining also from other sources). It’s not described as a BI tool although it looks a bit like it. It more looks like the future and BI combined with a copilot to help you along the way.

Session: Discover Project Sophia a new way to solve complex problems with next generation AI
Announcement: https://cloudblogs.microsoft.com/dynamics365/it/2023/11/16/introducing-project-sophia/
Try it out: aka.ms/ProjectSophia

Microsoft Fabric is General Available

Talking about combining data sources… Another announcement was the General Availability of Microsoft Fabric. From a BizApps perspective, you might have been using Power BI. Then this is most likely of interest for you.

Announcement: Empower Power BI users with Microsoft Fabric and Copilot Another announcement on the Fabric side was Mirroring in Microsoft Fabric.

Other event related

If you registered for Microsoft Ignite you got a few reminders by e-mail. Such as tips about the Microsoft Ignite Assistant powered by the latest Azure AI models. The new assistant can still be tried out on the event page. Ask about announcements and you will be pointed to the news page, https://news.microsoft.com/ignite-2023/.

You also got tips about downloadable digital swag. There’s no place like home #MSIgnite. Hybrid event… I could be at Ignite and at home at the same time. 😉

Conclusions

Even though I watched on-demand sessions only, I felt the excitement. It will be interesting to follow what this new copilot era will mean for us BizApps consultants and our customers. I just assume we need to learn more. As usual.

We now need to master both Power Platform, extending the platform, the AI possibilities and AI extensions as well as start building our own copilots and help our customers to build their own – copilots. Interesting times!

Most importantly, we need to understand when to use what technology and feature and know where to find more information. Microsoft Learn is where we go and look, obviously.

Feel free to tell me about YOUR Microsoft Ignite 2023 experience in a comment to this post.

(All pictures in this post are from the Microsoft Ignite event or the event site)