The Copilot Connection

With Zoe Wilson heading off to Ignite and Microsoft 365 choosing the day of recording to have a bit of a wobble, Kevin McDonnell is joined by Sara Fennah to look ahead to Microsoft Ignite and attempt to work out what Microsoft might have in store for us.
We pick through sessions covering Agent 365, Security and Compliance, Microsoft IQ, AI FinOps, local AI, Copilot extensibility and more, with just a little slightly irresponsible speculation about what those deliberately vague descriptions might really mean. Plus, Sara shares her practical advice for anyone attending Ignite in person: comfy shoes, sensible planning and, most importantly, talk to people!
If near London, register now for Fly with Copilot: London on 7th Dec.
Get over to Amsterdam for ESPC 2026 and don't forget your Christmas Ugly Sweaters.
Join Garry in Leeds on 24th Nov with M365 North's Ignite Recap.
Sessions
Project Perception Roadmap: New Capabilities, Use Cases & What’s Next
Prioritize and remediate your riskiest agents with Project Perception
Find and fix code vulnerabilities faster with Codename MDASH
MXC: Deploying Agents You Can Trust
The next evolution of AI FinOps: From cost to value
Plugins for Copilot: build once, govern once, use everywhere
Observability at every layer for every role
Manage and Secure your AI Agents at Enterprise Scale with Agent 365
Inside Look at Agent 365: Lessons from Microsoft’s Office of the CISO
Agentify your business processes: the next era of business applications (the Jeff Teper session)
Apps and agents: Business process transformation in Copilot Studio
Automate the Follow-Through with Autopilot
Agentic productivity with new Copilot capabilities in OneNote
Microsoft Contact Center Intelligence: modernize without rip and replace
Build your IQ using your unique enterprise context with Microsoft IQ
Full list here

After a longer-than-planned break, Kevin McDonnell and Garry Trinder are back to catch up on the latest developments across the Copilot and extensibility landscape. The conversation starts with reflections on recent community events including Scottish Summit and Microsoft’s Fly with Copilot tour before diving into a packed set of Microsoft announcements.
The main focus is the evolution of the new unified Copilot experience, bringing together Home, Code and Autopilot into a single destination. Kevin and Garry explore what this means for users, developers and administrators, discussing the convergence of Copilot experiences, how Copilot Code relates to GitHub Copilot, and why governance is becoming a key part of the AI story.
They also take a deep dive into Hybrid Intelligence, local and cloud model execution, managed execution containers, and the growing importance of balancing performance, privacy and cost. The discussion continues into Agent 365 updates, new cost management capabilities, spending policies, plugin registries, skills, MCP servers and what the future of Copilot extensibility might look like as Microsoft shifts towards a plugin-centric model.
Finally, with Microsoft Ignite approaching fast, Kevin and Garry share thoughts on what to watch for, highlight a number of upcoming community events, and explain why the next few months could be some of the most significant yet for the Microsoft Copilot ecosystem. Along the way there are the usual detours into SharePoint, governance, dancing injuries, and perhaps a few more renames than anyone expected.
Links
Fly with Copilot - Global AI Community
Introducing the new Copilot with Home, Code and Autopilot - The Official Microsoft Blog
Satya post on Infinite SaaS Factory - Post | LinkedIn
Building Windows for hybrid intelligence | Windows Experience Blog
Project HydraFusion: Frontier quality via multi-model orchestration - The GitHub Blog
What's new in Agent 365 - September 2026 | Microsoft Community Hub
Introducing the plugin registry - one place to discover and govern plugins for Microsoft Copilot | Microsoft Community Hub
https://powerplatformconf.com/
https://ignite.microsoft.com/
ESPC26 | Conference | 30th Nov- 03rd Dec 2026 | Amsterdam - ESPC

The first episode after a quiet summer, and the thread running through all of it is cost and renames. Kevin opens with a confession: he spun up Cowork to write these very show notes, it ran out of budget overnight, and once he topped the budget up it burned through 2,381 credits, which
he puts at twenty to thirty quid for maybe a fifth of what he wanted. That story turns out to be the episode in miniature, because Copilot Studio GitHub Harness has gone generally available in August based on a usage-based credit model, and this time the meter runs while you are
still building.
Around that we have another rename and a flattened logo, Microsoft's FY26 Q4 results with over thirty million paid Copilot seats, a leaked memo saying the AI app group has to earn the right to exist, a proper argument about whether 43 minutes a day is still how we talk
about value, and a long run through the autumn events season. Plus AI slop, blue rings, and a festival planning app nobody asked for but made all the difference.

Links:
https://www.howmanyblueringsshouldihave.com/
https://amireallyadualawardmvp.com/
https://techcommunity.microsoft.com/blog/copilot-studio-blog/more-powerful-agents-and-workflows-for-autonomous-business-processes-introducing/4542969
https://microsoft.github.io/mcscatblog/posts/copilot-harness-cost-governance/
https://futurework.blog/2026/08/14/microsoft-copilot-app-one-app-new-name-new-icon-new-url/
https://robquickenden.blog/2026/08/copilot-unified-app/
https://office365itpros.com/2026/07/30/fy26-q4-microsoft-results/
https://www.linkedin.com/posts/activity-7490143154260701184-rlGF
https://www.linkedin.com/posts/maryleenemeric_microsoft-microsoft365-copilotstudio-activity-7485892013830266880-rUJI

Events:
https://ainativeworkplace.com/
https://www.collabdays.org/2026-bletchleypark/
https://www.scottishsummit.com
https://espc.tech/conference/espc-2026

This week on The Copilot Connection, Kevin and Zoe dive into the growing impact of FinOps and tokenomics in the Copilot era.

From insights at Commsverse to real-world concerns, we explore how tools like Copilot and Cowork are shifting organisations from fixed licensing to consumption-driven models - bringing both opportunity and uncertainty.

The discussion focuses on balancing cost vs value, the importance of governance and guardrails, and why organisations must carefully pilot AI usage rather than roll it out blindly. They also highlight the challenge of helping users choose the right tool for the right task without driving up unnecessary costs.

Useful links:
Cowork cost management overview — https://learn.microsoft.com/en-us/microsoft-365/copilot/usage-based-billing-manage-copilot-credits
Cowork Cost Estimator -https://aka.ms/CustomerCoworkEstimator
Cowork Adoption site - https://adoption.microsoft.com/en-gb/copilot/cowork/ai-user/
 Cost management demo - https://demos.microsoft.com/app/present/6694#/0/0
An unsuspecting bill - https://www.reddit.com/r/copilotstudio/comments/1ueqedl/woke_up_to_a_47k_bill_after_deploying_one_copilot/
More on unsuspecting bills - https://www.linkedin.com/posts/peter-sabapathy-71a88145_a-post-on-reddit-this-week-described-someone-share-7475913687963467778-xsXa

In this episode of The Copilot Connection, Kevin McDonnell and Garry Trinder dive deep into the biggest developer-focused announcements coming out of Microsoft Build—and what they actually mean in practice.
We unpack a fast-moving couple of weeks in AI, from the shift in how Microsoft shares Build news (goodbye Book of News, hello live blog and CLI tooling), to the hands-on, lab-heavy focus that signals a return to Build’s developer roots. Expect plenty of perspective on what stood out, what worked, and what felt different this year.
The conversation then turns to one of the headline releases: Copilot Cowork now generally available. Kevin and Garry explore how Cowork changes the way we interact with Copilot - moving from simple chat to task-driven, cloud-executed workflows with deeper Microsoft 365 integration. They share real-world usage patterns, from daily task triage to cross-device workflows, and discuss the impact of its new consumption-based pricing model (and why “value over tokens” is the mindset shift we all need).
From there, they step into the more experimental space with Microsoft Scout—a local, autonomous agent inspired by OpenClaw that introduces concepts like heartbeats, browser automation, and powerful extensibility. The duo compare Scout vs Cowork, weighing up local vs cloud agents, flexibility vs control, and the growing importance of governance as agents gain more autonomy.

Useful Links

https://build.microsoft.com/
Build Live Blog
Build Blog - be yourself at work
Build Next Steps GitHub Repo
Cowork GA
The Cowork Cookbook (community link)
Microsoft Scout
Work IQ GA
Work IQ Licensing
Windows Platform Security
Project Solara
Surface Laptop Ultra
Surface RTX Spark Dev Box