Long live Viva Topics Copilot Studio

Written by Matt Shaw, Chief Operations Officer, oobe, 2024

I guess I should have expected that when we launch a blog, write topical (tropical?) that Microsoft would decide that the exact topic would be retiring in 2025.

I don't want to get all 1984 ministry of truth and rewrite history so I'm leaving the previous blog post with a small footnote to demonstrate how fast the Copilot ecosystem and technology in general is moving right now.

So, what's the future-resistant way to ground your Copilot 365 data? Well in the same way that Citrix settled on Xen for everything a while ago, it's also got Copilot in the name. Introducing Copilot Studio.

Copilot studio lets you create custom Copilots (artist formerly known as Power Virtual Agents). These Copilots aren't your everyday chatbot. They use GenAI to decipher meaning from prompts and they can interpret content from files you upload in the creation centre. So you give it a roadmap, a suite of policy documents or an annual report and it's instantly searchable, including tables and images thanks to OCR smarts. The best part is when the user receives a response, they get a citation with where the data came from, just like Microsoft Copilot, the artist formerly known as Bing Chat Enterprise. What's a few name changes between friends.

But that's the start of Copilot Studio. Do you want to create a flow or a PowerApp with a prompt? No problem, that's included. Do you want to craft a connector to Service now and have Copilot 365 log a support ticket for you? All the building blocks are there. Don't want to spend time uploading documents? No problem; SharePoint and public URLs are supported, too.

We deployed it for indexing our internal SOP repository at oobe, and it's pretty solid. You get natural language instructions based on the SOP, and a citation to read more. It's already saved me so much scrolling.

Copilot Studio, for me, is like Nerdio is to AVD. Sure, you can deploy AVD native, but Nerdio makes it shiny. 365 copilot is nice, but Copilot Studio is the special sauce. The "where have you been all my life".

Although the "how" may have changed with this Viva Topics sunset announcement, the "why" stays the same. You want your corporate data to be grounded, consistent and technically correct (the best kind of correct) then you want Copilot Studio to add that sparkle.

If you want to know more about how Copilot Studio can bedazzle your 365 Copilot deployment drop us a line. We've deployed it in oobe, and although it's only a week old, it's paid for itself twice over. Copilot Studio is an essential part of the oobe Copilot flight path - our offering to make copilot 365 successful in your business from pre-flight checks, through take-off and landing.

I reckon it's one of the smartest products that Microsoft has released since, well, 365 Copilot. It's got some intuitive features in it, and it's a tenant-wide low-cost license, meaning you pay once a month rather than per user.

Matt has worked with oobe for 10 years and been in IT for 13 (lucky?). He’s seen a lot of things from the early days in his career deploying XenDesktop and remembers when Intune was not as good as…Good. He now works in his dream role doing continuous improvement, process automation and strategy. He terms himself as a recovering techo but people still let him on the tools every now and then. He’s all about efficiency and doing more with what you have.