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Microsoft 365 Copilot's commercial failure

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Re: Microsoft 365 Copilot's commercial failure

#31

Post by w0m »

dangus wrote: post #26
PeterHolzwarth wrote: post #18

I perceive MS as just being in the "get people using it, accustomed to it, used to it, habituated to using it throughout their day" phase for the default free Win10/11 tier. That little copilot icon is sitting there in the task tray, clickable and usable. I think people will, to whatever degree makes sense for them, get used to making some use of the basic free tier. Monetization / restrictions requiring some degree…

The problem is that it doesn’t actually do anything. It’s “installed” at my company but basically refuses to interact with basic company data like files in sharepoint. Is it the IT department’s fault for not enabling something? I don’t know, but does that matter? If the normal search system has access to the data why doesn’t copilot? Surely it would be trivial for Microsoft to run copilot in a way that keeps company…

> It’s “installed” at my company but basically refuses to interact with basic company data like files in sharepoint.

on my work computer - there's a sep. 365Copilot app that is tied into Teams,Sharepoint, outlook, and I believe our engineering wiki. Probably other stuff I'm not aware of.

I'm honestly shocked how often I use it now.

If I get a random Pipeline failure; I'll copy/paste it into the o365 Copilot app - and it points me to an email I didn't notice ~3 months ago about a new policy change, and then points me to discussion thread I wasn't on ~2 weeks ago about how to get in compliance with direct links to EngWiki 'how to fix..' documentation, and an Teams link to join the breaking teams Office Hours.

Just off a single ~1 sentence prompt and a stack trace

It's kind of amazing.

Re: Microsoft 365 Copilot's commercial failure

#34

Post by jiggawatts »

tuatoru wrote: post #17

Microsoft's moat and cash cow is Active Directory. If corps ever stop needing that, MS will be in trouble. Until then, few worries. They can play at following fads (not that I think AI is a fad) and not worry about execution.

Active Directory comes free with Windows Server, it was never a "cash cow", that would be the Office suite.

Microsoft is actively killing of Active Directory and they're replacing it with Entra ID, which is "just" OAuth and hence is relatively easily replaced by a competing product.

Re: Microsoft 365 Copilot's commercial failure

#36

Post by PeterHolzwarth »

dangus wrote: post #26
PeterHolzwarth wrote: post #18

I perceive MS as just being in the "get people using it, accustomed to it, used to it, habituated to using it throughout their day" phase for the default free Win10/11 tier. That little copilot icon is sitting there in the task tray, clickable and usable. I think people will, to whatever degree makes sense for them, get used to making some use of the basic free tier. Monetization / restrictions requiring some degree…

The problem is that it doesn’t actually do anything. It’s “installed” at my company but basically refuses to interact with basic company data like files in sharepoint. Is it the IT department’s fault for not enabling something? I don’t know, but does that matter? If the normal search system has access to the data why doesn’t copilot? Surely it would be trivial for Microsoft to run copilot in a way that keeps company…

"The problem is that it doesn’t actually do anything."

I disagree, and I think you'll see what I mean when you shift the frame of reference from "person working at a large company with Office 365 installed" to a couple hundred million average Joe's having access to it at home.

Webs search is now a horrifying wasteland, and people know it. Remember the conversations we all had just a few years ago: LLM will replace web search. That's the key point here - not "replace web search" for the subset of people who have office jobs, but web search for the vastly greater number of people who just have it at home on their computer.

The tech - the products - are good enough for your average person at home who wants a starting point and a structure to work through for something they know nothing about. I think that's actually one of the strengths of the tech as it exists for the winder audience: you don't really need ultra accurate, super precise, info and checklists and guides when you just want to know what to look into to do some decorative tiling on the top of an old table you bought; a way to make sense of and work through a type of pop media you have become interested in; to give you a starting point to work through some new problem you have encountered in day to day life.

That "80 percent vaguely accurate-ish" threshold that LLMs can broadly deliver for a novice is actually good enough for that vast majority of things people deal with that aren't really super-critical. Are you idly curious about some ways to think about how to replant and re-do your back yard greenery? Curious about how to make sense of all the competing numbers and criteria and features when looking to buy your first air-conditioner? Want to take a vague, repetitive, not very well put together response to something your neighbor starting holding forth on on Nextdoor and make it tighter and better expressed?

That little Copilot icon that comes default in Windows legitimately can help you there.

Re: Microsoft 365 Copilot's commercial failure

#39

Post by oskarw85 »

I am just a typical Office user in a small company environment. Copilot buttons started popping in various Office applications. When I asked Copilot in Outlook to summarise mails from one of my contacts it happily searched the Internet and said it found nothing. AAA experience.

Re: Microsoft 365 Copilot's commercial failure

#40

Post by Havoc »

dangus wrote: post #21

It’s garbage. My company has it, presumably by default. You ask it a simple question like “find the company holidays document” and it just can’t do it. It’s somehow not hooked up to the basic sharepoint document storage for the company. Traditional search works fine.

Implementation issue. Ours is hooked up and it’s really good at finding stuff on sharepoint, emails, chat etc
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