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The Daily Stand-Up Agent A Custom Copilot for Summarizing Jira & Azure DevOps Progress
Modern software teams move fast. Between sprint planning, backlog grooming, pull requests, deployments, and stakeholder updates, developers often spend more time discussing work than actually doing it. One of the biggest pain points in Agile workflows is the daily stand-up meeting especially when team members need to manually summarize updates across dozens of tickets in tools like Jira and Azure DevOps. https://dellenny.com/the-daily-stand-up-agent-a-custom-copilot-for-summarizing-jira-azure-devops-progress/Copilot in Excel-5 Minutes to Outperform 90% of Excel Users with AI
Quick note: I'm a native Chinese speaker. This article was translated with AI assistance — but I've personally tested every step in English before publishing. What you see here works exactly as shown. Prerequisites: This tutorial requires the Copilot feature in Excel (Microsoft 365 subscription). Availability may vary by region and may require additional configuration. Following my previous two articles in the Copilot from a User's Perspective series, this is the first article in a new companion series: AI Tutorials. I'll continue updating the previous series — I just think it's important to break up the rhythm with something immediately actionable from time to time. Why did I dare use this title? I'm sure many of you think I'm exaggerating. In 5 minutes, most people can't even explain what a cross-sheet lookup is — but if you follow this tutorial today, I'm confident you'll agree with the title. If you don't believe me, start your timer now. Step 1: Open Excel and Learn the Terminology Before we start, let's make sure we speak the same language: Column — The vertical axis, labeled with letters (e.g., Column A, Column B). Row — The horizontal axis, labeled with numbers (e.g., Row 1, Row 2). Cell — A single coordinate. For example, A3 means Column A, Row 3. Range — A span from one cell to another. For example, B3:B10 means Column B, Rows 3 through 10. B3:D4 includes six cells: B3, C3, D3, B4, C4, D4. Worksheet — The tabs at the bottom of your Excel file (Sheet1, Sheet2, etc.). Each tab is a separate table. Workbook — The Excel file itself. You might be thinking: "You're starting THIS basic? No way you'll deliver on that title!" But here's the thing — if you understand these terms, you already have everything you need to use Copilot in Excel. Step 2: Create a Practice Dataset Create a new Excel file, open Copilot, and enter this prompt. Make sure to click "Allow Edits" when prompted. Create Sheet2 first with these columns: Name, Gender, Student ID, Score, Height, Class, and Commute Method. Randomly generate 30 rows of data. Make sure the Student IDs are NOT sequential numbers. Then create Sheet1: randomly pick 10 Student IDs from Sheet2 and list them in Column A. For both sheets, format the header row with a light gray fill, increase the font size by 1, and center-align. Most tutorials only teach you concepts — they never give you a dataset to practice with. Here, I just had AI generate a ready-made practice dataset so you can follow along with every step below. Now, let's get to work. Step 3: Use AI to Replace VLOOKUP VLOOKUP is the single most searched Excel function on the internet. Give me 30 seconds, and I'll make it irrelevant. With your tables ready, go to Sheet1. In the Copilot sidebar, type: Based on Column A in Sheet1, pull the values from Column D and Column E in Sheet2. That's it. You just accomplished what VLOOKUP does. Now here's where it gets interesting. VLOOKUP has a well-known limitation — it can only pull data from columns to the right of the lookup column, never to the left. Try this: Based on Column A in Sheet1, pull the values from Column A and Column B in Sheet2. If this works — and it will — you've just gone beyond what traditional VLOOKUP can do. And you never had to understand how VLOOKUP works under the hood. The prompts I used above are deliberately bare-bones. You can be much more specific: Based on Column A in Sheet1, pull the values from Column D and Column E in Sheet2. Insert these two columns before Column A in Sheet1, and fill them with a light gray background. The more Excel terminology you know, the more precise your prompts become — and the fewer errors you'll encounter. Did you notice something? Everything you just typed was nouns + logic. That is the core operating principle of generative AI. Let's keep going. Step 4: Multi-Condition Sorting Switch to Sheet2, where we have the full dataset. Sometimes you need complex sorting — Class in ascending order, Score in descending order within each class, and Student ID in ascending order within each score group. I consider myself an upper-intermediate Excel user, and I still couldn't do this manually — it requires nested sort configurations that most people never learn. But just describe what you want. In the Copilot sidebar, type: Sort the data with the following priority: Class ascending, Score descending, Student ID ascending. All three columns are sorted simultaneously, each with its own direction. If you could do this without AI, you'd already be an advanced Excel user. AI just eliminated that skill gap — and it's faster too. You might have noticed I didn't use column letter references (like "Column F") this time. In fact, I didn't need to in Step 3 either. AI can read the headers, think, and identify the right columns on its own. Step 5: Conditional Formatting Still on Sheet2. Sometimes you need visual differentiation — for example, blue highlighting for male students and pink for female students. In the Copilot sidebar, type: Fill the rows of male students with blue, and the rows of female students with pink. Without AI, I'd filter for males, apply the fill, then filter for females and repeat. That two-step process is surprisingly slow for something so simple. Sometimes you need to spot duplicates. Try: Bold the text in cells where Height values are duplicated. Without AI, this requires setting up conditional formatting rules — a skill that already puts you in intermediate-to-advanced territory. Now the sheet looks a bit messy. Let's reset: In Sheet2, reset all cells except the header row to default formatting. A Note on Prompting Style You'll notice that in Step 5, my prompts were almost entirely natural language — no column letters, no technical references. So why didn't I start the tutorial that way? Because I wanted to give you something you could copy-paste and get working immediately — something reliable and reproducible. I use natural language prompts because I've spent enough time with AI to understand its boundaries and behavior. The terminology-based approach from Step 3 is what I call "The Noun Method" — combine domain-specific nouns with natural-language logic to form complete instructions: Based on (logic) Column A (noun) pull (logic) from Sheet2 (noun) Column B (noun) and (logic) Column C (noun) Once you understand The Noun Method, you can effectively operate any generative AI tool. The key is learning the relevant nouns for each domain — and in Excel's case, there are remarkably few to learn. Closing Thoughts If you followed along with every step, the whole process probably took 10–15 minutes. But I believe that the moment you successfully ran the VLOOKUP prompt in Step 3, you stopped doubting the title. If you'd like more Excel + AI tutorials, follow me and leave a comment. I'll keep them coming. Next up: What You Need to Know About TokensThe Architecture of Copilot Agents: Building Intelligent Assistants for the Modern Era
The rapid evolution of artificial intelligence has ushered in a new class of systems often referred to as copilot agents. These agents are not fully autonomous decision-makers, nor are they passive tools they sit in the middle, augmenting human capability by assisting with tasks, providing insights, and automating workflows while keeping humans in the loop. From coding assistants to enterprise productivity tools, copilot agents are becoming foundational to how we interact with software. https://dellenny.com/the-architecture-of-copilot-agents-building-intelligent-assistants-for-the-modern-era/
Using Copilot meeting summaries for performance reviews - how?
Our HR team had this idea to use Copilot meeting recaps as input for performance reviews. Like, if a manager had 20 meetings with a direct report over the quarter, couldnt Copilot help surface key contributions and discussion themes? The problem is theres no way to aggregate multiple meeting summaries into something useful for a review. Each recap is a separate thing in each meeting. Has anyone figured out a workflow or workaround for this?
Got Copilot to use goal progress when drafting review feedback?
So I've been trying to experiment with how I use Copilot for performance management, reviews, goals, etc. When I manually feed goals, feedback results, etc into Copilot, it drafts pretty decent performance reviews. Now Im curious. Can I automatically feed these into copilot from any HR platform with API's or something? So it automatically views goal progress and drafts review feedback? I know if Viva Goals was still available, I would be able to do something along these lines. Anyone tried this?
Copilot pulling last weeks 1:1 action items into this weeks agenda, possible?
Spent 3 hours yesterday trying to get Copilot to pull open action items from last weeks 1:1 OneNote page and turn them into this weeks agenda. Gave up. Is this a prompt problem or just not possible with the current connectors?
Microsoft's Copilot: A Frustrating Flop in AI-Powered Productivity
Microsoft's Copilot was supposed to be the game-changer in productivity, but it's quickly proving to be a massive disappointment. The idea was simple: integrate AI directly into Word, Excel, PowerPoint, and other Office tools to make our lives easier. But when it comes to actually performing specific functions, Copilot falls flat. Here’s the problem: when you ask Copilot to alter a document, modify an Excel file, or adjust a PowerPoint presentation, it’s practically useless. Instead of performing the tasks as requested, it often leaves you hanging with vague suggestions or instructions. Users don't want to be told how to perform a task—they want it done. This is what an AI assistant should do: execute commands efficiently, not just offer advice. What makes this even more frustrating is that other AI tools, like ChatGPT, can handle these tasks effortlessly. When you ask ChatGPT to perform a specific function, it does so without hesitation. It’s able to understand the request and deliver exactly what’s needed. But Copilot? It struggles with the basics, and that’s unacceptable, especially from a company like Microsoft. It’s frankly embarrassing that Microsoft can’t get this right. The whole point of integrating AI into these tools was to streamline workflows and boost productivity. But if Copilot can’t even manage simple tasks like formatting a document or adjusting a spreadsheet, then what’s the point? Users don’t need another tool that tells them how to do something—they need one that does it for them. Microsoft, you’ve missed the mark with Copilot. It's not just a minor inconvenience; it's a serious flaw that undermines the value of your Office suite. When other AI tools can easily accomplish what Copilot can't, it's time to reevaluate. Users expect more, and frankly, they deserve more for their investment. What’s been your experience with Copilot? Is anyone else finding it as frustrating as I am? Let’s talk about it.
Automating the feedback collection process before reviews. Is it possible with Copilot?
Every quarter, our HR team manually emails people asking for peer feedback before reviews start. Its a huge time sink and half the responses come in late. Someone mentioned Copilot agents might be able to handle this, like automatically reaching out to the right people, collecting responses, and organizing them. Has anyone tried building something like this? Or is there a simpler way to automate 360 feedback collection in M365?
Copilot won't edit text in existing oneNote Page
Hey All, I have tried the following in both the OneNote desktop app and the OneNote O365 web app. Both fail in the way described below. I have a oneNote page that I use for time tracking on projects. I asked oneNote to edit all listings of the date in one section to 2026-05-05. Copilot states that it is starting, but then quickly transitions to a blank white box. The copilot box remains completely empty. It is unresponsive for 10 minutes. Eventually, I can click the copilot button in the menu bar and close copilot -- if I try do this right away, nothing happens. Please let me know if there is some setting or something that I need to enable, so that copilot can edit oneNoteMicrosoft 365 Copilot Gets Smarter: GPT-5.5 Thinking and ChatGPT Images 2.0 Transform Workflows
The evolution of workplace AI is accelerating, and the latest update to Microsoft 365 Copilot signals a major leap forward. With the introduction of GPT-5.5 Thinking and ChatGPT Images 2.0, Copilot is no longer just an assistant it’s becoming a more capable collaborator for complex thinking, creative production, and multi-step problem-solving. https://dellenny.com/microsoft-365-copilot-gets-smarter-gpt-5-5-thinking-and-chatgpt-images-2-0-transform-workflows/
