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

AI Workshop 101 and 201: Pushing Copilot to Its Limits

November 10, 2026
In-Person
2 CPE Credits

AI Workshop 101 and 201: Pushing Copilot to Its Limits

  • View Bio

    Instructor

    Wesley
    Hartman

    View Bio

    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.

This hands-on workshop moves participants beyond using Microsoft 365 Copilot as a smarter search box toward directing it as a working assistant. Participants examine how Copilot draws on organizational data to produce varied results, then work through three escalating exercises: writing structured prompts that pull context from email, chat, and documents; chaining a single task across Word, Excel, PowerPoint, Outlook, and Teams; and putting Copilot’s agents to work while building a simple custom agent. The session emphasizes recognizing where Copilot’s reliability breaks down and applying verification habits before relying on its output. Participants complete the session with a reusable prompt library and a working agent.

Learning Objectives

Upon completion of this course, participants will be able to:

  1. Apply Copilot’s data-grounding behavior to write more precise, context-rich prompts
  2. Use multi-step prompts to produce finished work products across Microsoft 365 apps
  3. Analyze results from Copilot’s agents and a self-built custom agent to assess their quality
  4. Identify where Copilot’s reliability breaks down and apply verification habits before relying on its output
  5. Distinguish tasks well-suited to Copilot from those that should stay with a person

Major Topics

  • How Copilot grounds responses in your Microsoft 365 data, and why the same prompt can produce different results
  • Structured, context-rich prompting across email, chat, and documents
  • Chaining a single task across Word, Excel, PowerPoint, Outlook, and Teams
  • Putting Copilot’s agents to work and building a simple custom agent for a recurring task
  • Recognizing Copilot’s reliability limits and applying verification habits

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 365 Copilot or a comparable AI assistant, and comfort writing basic prompts.

Advanced Preparation

Bring a fully charged laptop signed in to your work Microsoft 365 account with Copilot enabled.

Intended Audience

Professionals who already use Copilot at a basic level and want to move to multi-step prompting and agent workflows.

Provider

Colorado

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