November 10, 2026

In-Person

Colorado Society of CPAs - Galleria Office Towers
720 S. Colorado Blvd, Suite 500N, Glendale, Arapahoe County, Colorado 80246

2 CPE Credits

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AI Workshop 101 and 201: Pushing Copilot to Its Limits

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    Instructor

    Wesley
    Hartman

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    Wesley Hartman

    Bio

    Wesley Hartman is the Founder of Automata Practice Development. He started in Information Technology in 2005 and specifically in IT for accounting in 2009 at Kirsch Kohn and Bridge, an accounting firm with 80 years of history.

    At Kirsch Kohn and Bridge, he pioneered an RPA platform in 2014 with an automation to input K-1 data from a spreadsheet into tax software. From there he grew the platform to include, data mining, custom emailing and invoicing, and decision making. He has spoken at conferences to share his knowledge and experience in robot engineering along with other topics relating to technology and efficiency.

    He is part of the AICPA Engage Tech+ committee and speaks at the AICPA Engage conference on how to implement emerging technology and methods for making practices more efficient using technology.

    His focus is on analyzing procedures with the mindset of engineering efficiency and process improvement. He will break down tasks into pieces to look at all the cogs in the machine in order to find ways that technology can evolve and transform accounting.

    Wesley holds a Bachelor's of Science in Computer Engineering and worked on an autonomous vehicle project, so automation is part of his identity. He also practices martial arts, enjoys building furniture in his garage, and puts together a haunted maze in his driveway for Halloween.

Most people use Copilot like a smarter search box: ask a question, get an answer, move on. That barely scratches the surface. This workshop is for people ready to see how far it will really go, from multi-step prompts grounded in their own files, email, and meetings to handing work off from one app to the next.

The session opens with a look under the hood at how Copilot draws on Microsoft 365 data, why the same prompt can produce very different results, and how to steer it deliberately with prompt files instead of hoping for the best. From there, it is built around hands-on exercises that escalate in ambition. Participants will write structured prompts that pull information from 24 PDF files [provided by the presenter] into an Excel workbook, then chain that work across apps: Excel for visualizations, Word for an executive summary, PowerPoint for a presentation, and Outlook for a draft email.

Throughout, the discussion connects each step to participants’ own work and shows where Copilot’s ceiling really is.

Learning Objectives

  1. Identify how Copilot grounds its responses in Microsoft 365 data and why the same prompt can produce different results
  2. Apply structured prompts and prompt files to pull information from multiple PDF documents into an Excel workbook
  3. Use Copilot to carry a single project across Excel, Word, PowerPoint, and Outlook without losing context between apps
  4. Determine where Copilot’s output is reliable and where it requires human review before use

Major Topics

  • How Copilot uses Microsoft 365 data to ground its responses
  • Why identical prompts can return different results
  • Steering Copilot with structured prompts and prompt files
  • Extracting information from multiple PDFs into Excel
  • Chaining work across Excel, Word, PowerPoint, and Outlook
  • Handing work off between apps without losing context
  • Recognizing where Copilot’s reliability breaks down

CPE Credits Available

2 CPE Credits
2
Computer Software & Applications

Colorado Society of CPAs - Galleria Office Towers

720 S. Colorado Blvd, Suite 500N, Glendale, Arapahoe County, Colorado 80246

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Things to Know About This Course

Course Level

  • Intermediate

Professional Area of Focus

  • Artificial Intelligence (AI)
  • Technology

Prerequisites

Prior hands-on use of Microsoft Copilot or another AI tool, including writing basic prompts.

Advanced Preparation

Bring a fully charged laptop signed in to your work account with a Microsoft 365 Copilot license (not just the free Copilot Chat). Please confirm your license with your IT department before the session.

Intended Audience

CPAs and finance professionals who use Microsoft 365 and want to get more finished work out of Copilot.

Provider

Colorado

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