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Need to use a SharePoint intranet due to internal policies, company transitions, or legacy systems? When all the available information is overly technical or negative, where do you turn? Enter Fresh Perspectives: Living in the reality of SharePoint intranets. We provide useful, jargon-free insights and real-world examples to help you maximize the benefits of SharePoint intranets and tackle its challenges. Pro-SharePoint but realistic, we debunk misconceptions and share product management insights from Fresh Intranet.
Welcome everyone to a new episode of Fresh Perspectives with Jarbas Horst and David Bowman, product director for Fresh Intranet.
That's great. Great, David. Great to be here again with you. And this time we have something to celebrate today.
Yeah. And I just I thought as Lydia was doing our intro there that we probably should have had cake or something.
Yeah. Streamers.
Something to improve for next time. Well, but we are here to talk about SharePoint. It turned twenty five years. It's almost like me and you.
Well, twenty five times two nearly for me.
Yes. Well, there you go. So we'll be talking about the SharePoint celebration that happened beginning of March and Microsoft actually deployed a lot of gifts for the users, isn't it? So there are a lot of announcements that happened there.
Yes. A bunch of new stuff and plenty of things for us to talk about and react to as the latest round of additions for SharePoint, Copilot, Microsoft three six five, start to filter through the LinkedIn announcements, and into people's tenants.
Exactly.
But they tell us, like, when was your first contact with SharePoint?
So I started, Content and Code in I think it was it was either two thousand seven or two thousand nine. I I can't it's so long ago now that I don't I don't really remember which one of those two it was. And I started there as a dev manager, and we were building, websites for public sector organizations, local councils, those kind of things.
We were building websites for people on SharePoint. That was what we were doing. And I remember feeling completely overwhelmed in those early stages. I've been doing dot net development, which seemed very straightforward compared to building stuff for SharePoint.
So, yeah, that was that was my my first experience. It was a real baptism of fire, actually, of dropping into a dev team of a bunch of smart people that have been building stuff in SharePoint already for a long time.
And they had this new guy who clearly didn't know anything about SharePoint, who was supposed to be helping and supporting them to complete more projects successfully. So, yeah, that was my first experience. I mean, I think that was probably on CMS two thousand and two, really, what we were using.
These were like public facing websites.
Impressive. Yes, imagine that now.
Yes. Well, actually, the experience has changed so much that you could think that it's now a public facing experience.
Yeah, well the rest of the world has caught up fortunately and there are a bunch of really easy to use tools out there these days for creating websites.
I am pleased to not be developing any more websites on SharePoint, I'll put it that way.
Sounds good. What about you? What was your first contact experience with SharePoint?
It was twenty ten, and I was working as a developer building web parts, visual web parts, I think, that's how it was called, on top of SharePoint two thousand and seven. Okay. So everything started with SharePoint version two thousand and seven. Yes.
A very different experience. So I was a developer for around ten years and always building on top of SharePoint and seeing how that experience changed with each upgrade of SharePoint. Then when things move to cloud, things happening much faster.
That was very impressive. But yes, it was the version two thousand and seven, and I'm also happy that it has evolved and simplified a lot the way how we can extend and integrate with SharePoint. So that's great to see.
Yes. Yes. I think it may have been those early experiences at SharePoint that convinced me that I was a terrible developer and I should never be allowed to build anything in code ever again.
So that was a it was probably a good a good lesson for me to learn.
Well, on that note, so when was two thousand fourteen when the SharePoint online version basically came, I immediately told within my team that I'm not doing SharePoint on prem development anymore. Now is cloud. I'm done. And I'm happy that I made the shift because that's where everything is now, like it's cloud. Yes.
Yes. Yes. Yeah. Absolutely. Well, I think we all had a good a good idea of where the future was headed given the investment that Microsoft were putting into that that platform in those early stages.
What do you think is a bit you know, you've been doing this a while then, Jarbas. What do you think has been the biggest shift that's had the most impact for you and SharePoint in that time?
I think it was the shift to more than SharePoint. Think that was for me the biggest shift. And in terms also of experience, of development, of being able to integrate and again, extend SharePoint. So I think that's when also SharePoint got more exciting and easier to use for users in general.
Yes.
And then of course, as the Microsoft three sixty five SAPs is where we've been building around SharePoint, things like Teams coming in, and then later Viva and all of the elements that are part of that. So yes, I think that the shift to modern SharePoint and then seeing how that was serving as the foundation and is still the foundation for many of these additional applications around Microsoft three sixty five, I think that's the most interesting part. What's that from your point of view?
Yeah, well, I think similar.
I remember watching the announcement and the launch of commsites, communication sites in SharePoint, which is, you know, a pretty big deal for us at the time. You know, we had a big investment in Fresh as a sort of classic SharePoint solution up to then. You know, we've been doing a bit of experimentation with sort of modern web parts and that kind of stuff. And I think that was the first time that I really saw, you know, the direction that we needed to take with Fresh was gonna be, you know, real hard alignment with the things that Microsoft are doing in modern SharePoint communication sites. You know, that was it was it was obvious the direction that that we had to that we had to move in. Because, you know, you could you could see that this was becoming a product that was gonna be less and less about, technical people building stuff and more about capable, able, power users creating and managing resources in SharePoint.
It's interesting to say that because this is actually how it has evolved over time. Like, has has become less and less technical.
It's much easier to extend SharePoint and customize, let's say, the view of a list, for example.
Yeah. Yeah. Well, I think at the same time, it's still an extremely technical product. We're gonna talk about some of this, in in in a little bit.
The you know, in order to maximize what SharePoint provides you, you do need to think like a developer. Right? You know, it requires somebody of a fairly technical mindset to be able to get the best out of SharePoint. You know, it's easy to create a site.
It's easy to edit the pages. It's easy to chuck a few things, on a page and get it to display content. It's a very easy product, I think, to do sort of somewhere between, proof of concepts and production ready systems. But in order to use this thing at scale for specific workloads, you know, it needs planning.
It needs people that are technical to wrangle all of the components together.
It's a great foundation. And I think talking about the foundation, there is a foundational change that Microsoft has introduced So with the twenty five years, Microsoft dropped a lot of big announcements for SharePoint. One of them is a new experience, the new SharePoint experience.
And we're going to cover that a bit in detail now here.
Yeah. So give us the outline. What did they say? What did they do? What they brought? You've been writing about this, so I'm gonna test your knowledge.
That's great. Well, yeah, so I put a blog post out there on the Fresh Intranet website. We're going to link that in this video here. So basically, the new SharePoint experience is basically a refreshed app bar built around how people work.
And this app bar is kind of on the left navigation of the SharePoint experience, so that expands across your entire experience in SharePoint. So it doesn't matter where you are in SharePoint, so in, let's say, in a learning center or in a different site, so you have that bar following you everywhere. And that bar consists of a few capabilities, right? So there are a few things that you can start or do from there.
So the first element is a home button. So what does that button do? So when you click on that, it will basically redirect you to the home site that is configured in SharePoint. So that could be, for example, your internet home page.
So that's how that could be configured. We have then following that button, there is this Discover capability or option. And Discover basically is now a central place.
I see that as a personalized front door for your content.
So which means here that as a user, so that's a place where I can go now to discover content, which means that could be from favorite sites, from news here coming from across the internet or SharePoint in general. So it's not just focused on your internet, it's focused on the overall content on the Internet.
Yeah. I think that's important qualifier, I think, for Microsoft. This isn't functionality that is specifically aimed at, intranet or document management or specific work, but this is kind of cross workload. Anything that you're doing in SharePoint is being brought into this Discover kind of app that's been provided.
So that's a very good point, and this applies actually to this entire experience, right? So the refreshed API is covering the entire SharePoint experience and not just a specific workload, as you mentioned there. So Discover, we have been discussing here, will also give you the coworker updates, file activity. So it's basically tailored around the individual user.
So for an end user, this also means here things that I have saved to read later or documents that have set as favorites. So that's also the place where I can go and discover, find that content. Following this section, we have the publish part. I think it's a central hub for content creators. So aiming more at that audience, people creating content because that's the place from where you can start the creation of a news post, of a page in a target site. So you can choose basically where that content should go and be created.
And again, irrespective of workloads, this could be, you know, you're creating a set of learning materials or blog posts on a new product launch, not necessarily specifically about intranets. This is content cross workload.
Yeah, exactly. You can use page templates, but again here, so it's not just focused around the entire organizational page templates.
And Microsoft has actually big ambitions here for this specific section. They say they want to integrate Viva Amplify under publish, which means you would be able to then manage and create campaigns and also distribute your content across the multiple channels like email, Viva Engage, Teams, all from a single place. I think that's an interesting part. For people like creating content, so that means also you have now an overview of new posts, of pages. You can see what's in draft mode and then take actions from that. Even show some level of analytics, so that's built in as well.
Following this section, we have the build part, which is here, I think, for the makers, for people who want to create a new site, a new list, a library, or even an agent.
What I like about this section here, and this works very well if you have a Copilot license, you can have an overview of all of the agents that you have created or that you have been assigned or that you have access to.
Think this overview was missing from an end user point of view, you can access that now in a very simple way.
This is making agents available as a resource in the same way the lists or libraries are in SharePoint?
Indeed. And it's a great overview. I think that was missing and people can access that now.
So basically, those are the four elements available now from this And just under this build, you know, we've seen some we saw some videos as part of the launch.
We've seen some screenshots of using AI to be able to plan and build a workspace in SharePoint. Right? You know, kind of natural language queries of being able to put together a site, add some lists, provision some libraries as part of that, using AI to be able to describe the kind of the workspace that you're creating in SharePoint. And again, I think this adds an even better layer of functionality for people that are creating these kind of workspaces in SharePoint.
Indeed. So, that's the part of AI. So around related to these announcements, so there is also this AI bit. So you cover a part of that here. Another change that was introduced is the renaming of the knowledge agent. I think we discussed that in the previous episode.
So the knowledge agent is this floating element button the right corner bottom of SharePoint, And this was now renamed to AI in SharePoint, or SharePoint AI. So that's called now SharePoint AI.
I think Microsoft is simplifying this stored narrative around AI now.
Basically the same capabilities as Knowledge Agent, but now just with a new name.
Yeah, and I think overall, certainly what I can see as someone that's used SharePoint for a long time, Neil, is that this is a really nice improvement to the navigation around SharePoint, better improved tools for being able to manage content, workspaces, to be able to see what you're doing in SharePoint. You know, if you're using it a lot, you've got a lot of content and resources in there. This is a really nice enhancement to how SharePoint works.
It is. I mean, one thing that I really liked about this new experience, the way, so this is something you can enable as a SharePoint administrator. You can enable this experience for your users. As a user, you can choose whether you want to keep the experience or not. So there is this opt out option currently because it's in preview mode.
As fresh, well, we are building on top of SharePoint and it was really nice to see that when we turned on the experience, everything from fresh is still working. We didn't have to change anything. I think that a great alignment with the product and how SharePoint works as well.
A full testament to the team who do a great job of staying in the architecture and the guide rails that Microsoft provides. I think a a vendor on the Microsoft ecosystem, making sure you're in this position to be able to react very quickly to new features, functionality that Microsoft make it available.
And I think it's also great to see that if you remain within the supported patterns for extending and build on top of SharePoint, that your solution will just continue working. Right.
That's nice There was another there was an additional announcement talking about skills in SharePoint.
Let's talk about this because I think that's gonna lead us on to another topic that we wanna talk about today.
So a skill is basically a capability that I can give to my AI. It comes from Claude, so Claude is also another AI capability that comes from Anthropic.
So Skills is now available also in SharePoint, which means I can give my SharePoint AI capabilities in form of a skill.
When the SharePoint AI is performing a task, it will consider the instructions within that skill to perform the task.
And this could be things like creating, uploading documents, renaming files, structuring metadata, adding formatting to lists. These are the kinds of things that can be embedded as skills inside SharePoint.
Yes. Yeah. So I was watching some videos about that because it's currently still being rolled out. And it's impressively it's quite nice to see how simple it is to use the capabilities. But I think you still need a bit of a technical understanding of what you want to achieve in the end, so you can really take the most out of the capability here.
Yeah. You know, I think if you're, again, kind of back to that that conversation we were having earlier about, kind of being someone of a technical mindset, and that has a good understanding of the internals of SharePoint, of the concepts of the outcome that you're trying to create, as you say, it's those sort of people that are gonna get the maximum benefit out of this functionality. I think for people that are interest you know, kind of people that are building or responsible for delivery of a service to their employees. Right? A knowledge base and intranet, and on of a particularly technical mindset.
There is a fairly steep learning curve, would say, to be able to make most use of this.
This makes sense, yeah. But I think if we look in terms of internal communications, you could have a skill around validating your content. After you have created the page, you could run a skill on top of that content to validate in terms of accessible language, for example. So in this skill, you have everything described, classify, what categorizes as accessible, and it could be applied in different terms in respect to the content.
So that's one way how that could be used on a content basis.
Yeah.
What I quite liked about the announcement when it was running at the beginning of the month was the number of times that people from Microsoft referred to it as being a fresh look There we go.
It's an acknowledgment.
Yes. Yes. I hope that we'd wormed our way in there somewhere.
Yes. A coincidence, I'm sure, but it was nice to think about while it was happening.
Yeah. Maybe inspirational.
Yes. Yes. Yes. Alright. So, you know, look, think an attractive UI update to SharePoint that we've had enabled in our fresh demo environments and had a lot of positive comments from people that we're that we're showing the product to at the moment.
It's been great to, you know, be able to show fresh working in this in this new UI and some great new functionality that Microsoft are providing.
And obviously for customers that have Copilot licenses are able to get a lot more value out of the system that they're already using.
Definitely, definitely. It's again a great addition. We continue to see Microsoft investing in SharePoint. So this has been happening, I think, for two years now.
They have I think a lot has happened around pages and this has now expanded to this new experience. So yeah, it's great tool to be using and be creating on top.
I think one, you know, we've obviously had a lot of discussions over the last, you know, over the last couple of weeks since the since the twenty fifth birthday announcement. But, you know, before that too, considering the amount of automation that is available for kind of creating code, writing applications features, that that kind of stuff, that this is a, you know, an area in significant development and change at the moment. You know, obviously, our own development team are using these tools to be able to automate elements of the development of the product that we're doing.
And, you know, were kind of thinking about, you know, how far away are we from being able to automate everything in SharePoint, of being able to create an intranet from scratch, using Copilot, skills, Claws, open source software. You These things feel really tangible at the moment when you listen to the announcements, reading content on LinkedIn particularly.
This seems like an area in a lot of change at the moment. What are your thoughts on this?
This is an interesting one. I mean, when you look at all of the possibilities, there are many and I think being able to create something has been democratized now. Right? You would need a developer to go and let's say Let's start simple, right?
Just create a quick links web part, something that people just want as part of an intranet. Yeah. Now you could create that yourself without being a developer, without knowing how to code. So you could create a web part yourself.
And make it accessible, visual, having some appeal.
You know, you don't you don't need to understand how to develop functionality for SharePoint specifically. These are kind of repeatable patterns that you can get some piece of software to create for you now.
It doesn't stop there, right? So it could be a web part, it could be formatting a list to look nicer or close to your requirements.
The thing that I think is consistent, even in the past, right? So in the past, if you had a team in your organization of developers, you could also build a quick links web and achieve the same thing. You can do that fast now. That's the change. Now, it like an intranet is not just creating these things once, or a software in general, it's not about spending a few hours and creating something, it's the service that goes around that, with that, and the maintenance. Yeah.
Yeah. The you know, I think it's the, you know, the one of the organizations that I used to work for many, many, many years ago, kind of, you know, pre cloud, Microsoft had access databases. Right? And we had a we had a person in the organization that was really good at access and, you know, was creating automating a lot of manual processes, moving paper based systems into computers, and they built an, you know, absolutely comprehensive system and reporting using Access.
And it was great. Right? It was exciting. It was really good to look at.
It was a you know, this was a long time ago. Right? In, you know, kind of very early Internet stages.
And the idea for the organization at the time to be able to automate a lot of these processes in this way was kind of mind blowing. Right?
The problem was this entire system was relying on this one person's knowledge and experience.
And when they were no longer able to manage and update the system, this became really challenging for the organization that now had this, you know, what was now a legacy of very specialized, very bespoke systems. And, you know, I think we've seen these same problems continue on. Right? You know, as you say, if you have a team of people that can create web parts and understand how build stuff in SharePoint framework, It's possible for people to create some level of components to do some customizations to put together a the system that, you know, on some level can feel a bit like an intranet. The challenge comes afterwards. Right?
Yeah.
Usage, new functionality, people move on, being able to sustain it, grow it, manage it. There is an underlying service in SharePoint that's gonna continue to evolve new workloads, new sites, new content, and the thing that you're creating needs to evolve alongside that service as well. So, you know, I think it's one of those situations of, you can do some of these things to a to a level.
Whether you should or not remains the question.
Just as a random example here, I have created many applications now using Clod.
I create that for fun, I used it a few minutes and then I stopped that. So you can do similar things right now. You could create a web pod, you could format a list. So if you don't have someone who takes ownership in your environment, to take care of that application that they have created and keep maintaining that over time and own it, so then this will not be sustainable.
Because that's the role of the vendor here. So first of all, helping you get started, achieve your launch deadline and structuring and deploying the project, Train the people who will be using this solution, and then also keep maintaining and evolving that over time. If you can provide the same services within the organization, then of course you can replicate that. But it doesn't work the same way as just like going, spending a few hours creating something.
Yeah. Creation is not the same as innovation and is not the same as maintenance management.
You know, that it there are as we have always seen with kind of, SharePoint hobby projects, you know, it requires ownership, management, maintenance. You know, we work with some customers that have some fantastic homegrown SharePoint intranets. And the thing that has made the difference in their organization is the person that cares about it and is spending their entire day, managing, maintaining, connecting narrative to people, content.
You know, it's a full time job managing one of these solutions in SharePoint for at least one person in those organizations.
Definitely, definitely.
So, you know, you know, I think we as we as we've talked about on this podcast numerous times with people from Microsoft and others about, you know, the kind of continuing role of third party products and services in this market particularly. And I don't think that there's been any launch or announcement that I've seen that has removed the need, you know, a, for an intranet or something that turn that creates a workload like intranet inside of SharePoint.
I agree with you. I think I think as we have just said here now, right, so it's the it's like you're providing As a vendor, you're providing an experience and a set of sales that go along with that experience and software that you provide. So I also don't think that that because now the entry level for creating is much simpler than it was years ago, that you could just say, Okay, so I'm going to use AI for everything. Because the aspects that we discuss here of ownership and maintenance is not easy to sustain over time.
Yeah. Well, know, look, I mean no disrespect to any vendors that are kind of operating in this mode. But, you know, I think the idea of having a collection of web parts becomes a less attractive proposition for people because I think collections of web parts can be replaced and built over time at a at a relatively low cost now.
You know, we made an intentional decision to sort of follow the independent software as a service vendors to be able to create a product, a workload defined workload that lives inside of SharePoint refresh. You know, I think it regardless of the changes in technology, would be pretty difficult to script something like that from the ground up.
Yeah, because it's a connection of multiple experiences that come together to build the intranet workload. That's how it ends. If we think of our solution, so it starts I like this aspect of the content creation because we have a content creation wizard that's a guided experience that goes to an editorial calendar where you can see an overview of the content. So everything is connected then to analytics, to content governance. It's this entire connected experience that you provide to people.
Well, we'll be back on this topic, in coming episodes and podcasts.
You know, I think that, it's valid to say that the, it's much easier, faster to create high quality components without needing an extensive team of developers these days. But I think, you know, kind of building a cohesive experience is something that, you know, still a relative investment from a vendor.
Definitely. I agree with that.
Alright. How do you see SharePoint further developing, Jarbas, if you were kind of casting your mind forward to the next three years, without fixing you to a bunch of predictions that you're gonna be held to. What's your view about how this is all gonna change?
Think Microsoft's investment on AI will continue, because that's how Microsoft currently is set up.
There is a big push for extending the areas of Copilot, so where Copilot active and play a role. So I believe this will become more normal.
One thing we didn't mention, so that maybe plays a role here, Microsoft has also introduced a new license type, the E7 license. So what is an E7 license? It's basically an enterprise license that gives people AI access. So AI Copilot is now bundled into the E5 license, or they call it E7.
It comes with other benefits as well. It has a cheaper pricing compared to everything that you would have to pay separately. So you have now an AI powered user. I think Microsoft wants to increase AI adoption.
They are simplifying the licensing model and we will see AI more accessible and available to users in SharePoint. I think that's how we So in terms of how this all unfolds, I think it's hard to say, but I like to think that they will continue investing in SharePoint and keep extending the experience the same way as they have done now for the past two years.
So that when we come to celebrate thirty years of SharePoint, we have still these exciting things to talk about also for me to write about.
Or it could be for you. Agents will be talking to each other on the podcast instead.
We'll be surplus to requirements by then.
I think that this is a very interesting thing, Dave, because I think that in this age of AI, what people want in the end is the real connections and the human to human interactions and the value that they can get from others' experiences.
I think that's something that we can provide on a podcast or when you are writing a blog post or a LinkedIn post where you are conveying your experience.
I know you are joking, but I think that's the value that people get from really listening to people's experiences. I think that's what we humans will want to have, regardless whether we have tons of agents and robots walking around and doing things digitally. But how is that from your point of view?
Well, you know, look, think as far as kind of SharePoint further developing this employee experience, I agree with everything that you said.
I think, you know, you can see that the investment in AI as a technology, the investment in Copilot as a as a platform for people to use, isn't slowing down. It just, you know, it gathers more and more pace.
I think things like copilot tasks and the skills in SharePoint provide some really new exciting options that help individuals be able to get some of the more boring bits of their jobs done.
You know, the moment that I can have my agent do my iHasco training for me, the better.
And, you know, reclaim the time that I spend on that to more productive endeavors would be great.
So, you know, I think being able to put the put the task to work on a personal basis is, you know, is hugely valuable. You know, I think there's still a question mark for me about how do organizations optimize themselves with this technology.
You know, I think we've seen a lot of announcements about redundancies and workforce cuts and, you know, efficiencies gained from AI as being the thing that people are pointing at. You know, there's there is a there is a big chunk of that that makes me feel very uncomfortable, about, you know, how organizations are using this technology to make themselves more money. So, you know, I think there is a there is gonna be a constant balance between, you know how to how do you help people in your organization to make themselves more efficient and how do you direct the efficiencies that you've gained onto more productive endeavor rather than using it as a reason to cut huge amounts of your workforce.
Yeah. Good point, David.
Now this one question, I think it's maybe interesting. So if you wouldn't be doing SharePoint, what would you be doing instead?
Yeah. I don't know. I saw this on the list, and, you know, it's a it's a question that, I don't I don't know if I really have an answer for this. You know, as I said, I'm moving to SharePoint while still doing kind of moving between development and management.
You know, I think if SharePoint hadn't existed, I'd be maybe I'd be working for Google or something would be would be where I where I ended up.
Barry, what about you?
During my experience working in the Microsoft SharePoint space for the last fifteen more years, I had a phase where I had to work for a company where Microsoft S5 wasn't focused. It was a way of integrating, but it wasn't the focus. And I had to work with Google applications, Not Teams, using Slack, using in development like Confluence and Jira to manage the development part as a product manager. And it was a very different experience, I'll put it that way. And I really love that I am still in this space of SharePoint, Microsoft three sixty So if I wouldn't be doing that, I don't know either.
It's hard to imagine not being within this space. I think that's the challenge.
Having worked in it for twenty years or so now, it's difficult to imagine doing anything else. Or working in an organization organisation that wasn't lined up with Microsoft, wasn't using SharePoint, wasn't using Teams. I think I'd feel like I'd lost one of my arms or something.
Yes, yes. It feels strange. It feels like there is something being missed, right?
Because you are so used with the way how Teams works and the way how SharePoint works. I suspect it would be a bit like switching from iPhone to Android.
Not that there's anything wrong with Android, of course, but you pick your ecosystem and that's what you understand, right? And the pain of switching is immense.
Yes.
Think this Well, having had this short experience, is how it was for me.
But we have this closing question where we ask people about their favorite app. Last time we talked about this, your favorite app was ChatGPT. Has this changed, David?
Has this changed? Well, I think I I, like many others, have been experimenting increasingly with Claude. I mean, would say I'm probably a fifty fifty usage between those two things now.
And speaking of kind of immense pain of switching, I've been I've been through it.
So, you know, it's been a it's been a useful activity to read about others' experiences switching these apps, of beginning to learn about how you store and manage your context in as best practice way as possible. Because I suspect this won't be the last time that I'm switching apps, and trying to build in resilience for how you make this easier in future has been a, you know, really kind of interesting. Like, decoupling my context from the app has been the thing that I've been spending a lot of time thinking about. And, you know, I I get a sense that others are on a on a sort of similar journey. So, look, that was my long winded way of saying, you know, I think a AI apps are still the number one thing that I'm using. You know, I spend less and less time in a web browser these days on Google, and more and more time using AI apps both on kind of desktop and mobile.
What about you? Google Maps, I think, was your app of choice?
That's right. Well, for traveling, it's still a useful one. But on a personal usage, I was also using ChatGPT a lot and I liked the Plus subscription, so I canceled that subscription and moved to Claude a few months ago.
The reason here was around, I want to experiment some of the capabilities that Claude has. Of the things is called Claude in Chrome, it's an extension, I run an experiment where they could generate analytics data in our intranet, so our demos can look nicer when we are talking about analytics. And it worked so well and was so easy to set up. So I basically bought that subscription and I'm using Clod now. Think feels like Clod is for people who want to build and create, and ChatGPT That's my feeling, right? ChatGPT has a consumer experience. In ChatGPT I like the option for creating images for the voice chat, that experience with much mice.
Don't think that Claude has the same experience.
It's just a different AI experience. I like Claude, it's closer to this development background I have and you can build and do more things with that apparently. So I'm enjoying Claude now.
Yeah, I think for me it certainly has a more enterprise feel to the app, the suite of tools that that they're building out there.
You know, they are spending a lot of time on marketing and positioning at the moment. So it's no surprise to see that there's a sort of positive momentum. And, you know, you can you can see that some of the, controversy surrounding OpenAI, is probably also having a having an impact on, people making a switch.
Yeah. So, mentioning Claude here, one thing that we can, maybe close this with is that I think that's a very smart move for Microsoft. Microsoft is really actively listening to the market and how AI is evolving. They have this very close partnership with OpenAI. They have brought a lot of that knowledge and IP into Copilot. They have done the same thing now with Claude.
These skills that we know from Claude are now also available in SharePoint, we've just talked about that. The AI models from Claude, Sonet and Opus, so that's also available now in Copilot. For the AI models coming here from Anthropic to work in Copilot, that is available. So if people are listing us here from the US, Canada, and so on, so that's available by default for these users, for these tenants. If people are accessing or want to use Anthropic models from the UK, from the European Union, and a few other regions, sovereign clouds as well, they would need to turn that on explicitly.
Anthropic is now a subprocessor from Microsoft.
Just to close it that way.
Well, let's say happy birthday SharePoint. Good job SharePoint team. See you soon.
Happy birthday.