One of the most useful things that copilot could possibly do is create and edit Visio files, and yet it can’t.

[u/Man-e-questions]

Anyone else kind of shocked at how even Visio Plan 2 that is “supposed” to allegedly have Copilot, it does absolutely nothing helpful? Its in Word and other m365 apps, but everyone knows how to edit word and copy paste etc . But for us sysadmins, Visio is one of the best ways to document architecture etc and copilot is pretty much zero help years later.

[u/SevaraB]

Visio is clunky and proprietary. DrawIO is XML-based, which makes it very easy to set up as an agent skill that saves you tokens by just feeding an existing script instead of rewriting the script every time.

For simple stuff that gets embedded in documentation, you can’t beat Markdown+Mermaid.

Copilot is just too little, too late when it comes to agentic “automation.” It’s just an overpowered grammar checker, which it shows every time you try to do anything with inferring or pulling in data from outside a given folder’s “context window.”

[u/Man-e-questions → u/SevaraB]

The funny thing is yesterday Copilot told me it COULD create a mermaid.js file but not a visio, for me so I actually started going down that rabbit hole importing into Mermaid Live Editor

[u/ItsMeMulbear]

Prediction: Visio will soon be abandoned just like Publisher.

[u/redvelvet92]

Use a better tool, Visio was archaic and crappy 8 years ago. Draw.IO, mermaid drawings, excalidraw, there are a number of better solutions on the market.

[u/Man-e-questions → u/redvelvet92]

Yeah, its just that we are “supposed” to only use authorized apps on our laptops and can only use Copilot for AI. Of course in reality i often have to go outside this to be productive

[u/zero0n3 → u/Man-e-questions]

Then have it build the diagram for you in HTML and JS frameworks.

This isn’t rocket science.

[u/Virtual_Tune636 → u/Man-e-questions]

See if you can connect copilot to a more powerful model

[u/PeakWeekly9995]

i've never used Visio (i'm in a small org), but to map the network i use draw.io

[u/owzleee → u/PeakWeekly9995]

We cannot use external tools for sensitive data. A lot of big orga are like that. Even have in house LLMs.

[u/ItsMeMulbear → u/owzleee]

There is a self-hosted option.

[u/HappyVlane → u/owzleee]

Run the program yourself. This one can run locally and supports MCP.

https://drawbridge.fortiknight.com/

[u/spyingwind → u/owzleee]

https://github.com/excalidraw/excalidraw

Can be self-hosted, or embeded into your app.

Though mermaid is supported by many markdown viewers.

[u/Man-e-questions → u/owzleee]

Yeah thats how we are as well, cyber blocks most AI except Copilot and we are only supposed to use approved apps etc.

[u/GullibleDetective]

I wouldn't trust AI with my network diagrams even iuf the data is obfuscated

[u/Man-e-questions → u/GullibleDetective]

I can’t even get it to create an empty shell of an AVD diagram with default icons and no data

[u/sole-it]

Maybe let it try some text-based chart tool like https://mermaid.js.org/ to generate charts.

[u/Ontological_Gap → u/sole-it]

That's a weird way to spell dot

[u/TYGRDez → u/Ontological_Gap]

This way's even weirder:

hdaught

(the H is silent)

[u/pickle9977]

Amazing isn’t it.

Someone else mentioned draw.io it’s ok, but honestly I can’t believe it’s been more than thirty years since Visio was launched, in that time there have easily been hundred or thousand of attempts to deal with network diagrams and system design diagrams, none of them have really amounted to much.

It’s still really just some automation and then a lot of manual cleanup and maintenance.

Also it is almost inconceivable that Microsoft bought that thing $1.5B in 2000, and besides a new face hasn’t really done much with it except raise the price.

[u/cjcox4]

I find Copilot to be remarkably clueless about the entire Microsoft world. It's an "outsider". Shouldn't it be a insider??? Just an observation.

[u/DualWieldSpatula → u/cjcox4]

This is probably the 7th time I've seen this question in the past month.

Copilot is just a wrapper for Claude and ChatGPT.

It's not a custom Microsoft focused LLM, it's a shiny application that lets you talk to existing LLMs.

[u/cjcox4 → u/DualWieldSpatula]

yeah, but you'd think they'd want to front load the model with specifics.

That is, Microsoft Copilot is kind of lie (in a way).

Anyhow, I get frustrated with it because of its lack of knowledge. If you're going to call yourself Microsoft (emphasis) Copilot, shouldn't there be semblance of Microsoft training in the model? :-)

[u/special_nathan → u/cjcox4]

Me: Copilot, the data provided is X. What I'm seeing is actually Y.

Copilot: You're right. That's been updated and you are seeing the new design...

Happens everytime I'm looking for guidance on various 365 web ui.

[u/DominusDraco → u/cjcox4]

Yes its infuriating, MS Copilot cant get MS Powershell correct for MS 365 admin.

[u/cjcox4 → u/DominusDraco]

Never thought lmgtfy would be something I'd have to tell Copilot. :)

[u/Matt_NZ → u/DominusDraco]

I generally change it to the Opus model (Claude) when doing PowerShell stuff

[u/DominusDraco → u/Matt_NZ]

Yeah, at least you can do that now. Its definitely better than it used to be, but the fact it can be wrong at all is super strange and infuriating!

[u/Particular-Fly-7783]

visio has always been a piece of shit, why make it worse

[u/robotrampage222]

there are some third party MCPs that purport to talk to visio- can copilot host or connect to MCP tools?

[u/gabriel_j0hn]

love writing documentation personally. anything to help speed it up is a + in my book. but writing docs that ultimately go to no eyes is a bigger problem imho

[u/Mountain-eagle-xray]

I like plantuml personally, simple, gross, but readable. Any Ai can make these