There's competition in the Office productivity space! Richard chats with Sharon Weaver about her experiences with M365 Copilot and Anthropic's Claude Cowork to improve information worker productivity. Sharon talks about the confusion around all the different copilots in the Microsoft space - including the chat tools, research agents, and more. But when it comes to helping with an Excel spreadsheet, M365 Copilot can't do what Claude Cowork can do. Sharon talks about describing the goals of a spreadsheet to Claude Cowork and having the tool generate the spreadsheet, make corrections, and add formatting. Cowork has similar capabilities for presentations, and with the Connector library, new functionality is being added routinely. There's some competition in the AI productivity space - things are getting interesting!

Links

• Microsoft 365 Copilot
• Researcher in Microsoft 365 Copilot
• Claude Cowork
• Claude Cowork Connectors
• Copilot in PowerPoint

Recorded February 24, 2026

What does the world look like after Microsoft Deployment Toolkit? Richard talks to MDT creator Michael Niehaus about the life and death of MDT. Michael talks about his early days at Microsoft, when he created a better way to manage operating system images so you can build and rebuild Windows PCs for your organization. But MDT had been in maintenance since 2013, without specific support for Windows 11. And now, some security concerns have ended support entirely. So what happens next? Michael offers fixes to keep MDT safe to use, and some alternatives if you want to keep managing your own images!

Links

• Microsoft Deployment Toolkit
• Michael's Post of the MDT Vulnerability
• Windows Autopilot
• Friends of MDT
• MDT Retirement Notice
• Microsoft Intune
• 2Pint DeployR
• MMS Conference
• iPXE Anywhere

Recorded February 17, 2026

How does your company communicate with its employees today? Richard chats with Emily Mancini about her work with companies that manage internal communications. Emily talks about the power of email, collaborative messaging like Teams, and the Microsoft Viva products Engage and Amplify. The conversation digs into knowing where your people look for info, how they communicate, and what they want to connect with. Being able to measure the response to different communication means helps you to work on better messages and methods - the goal is to enable employees to connect with and utilize the resources of the organization, creating a stronger company culture!

Links

• Microsoft Viva Engage
• Microsoft Viva Amplify
• Create and Send a News Digest

Recorded March 9, 2026