What's Next For Accounting? - Issue #107
Jason Staats
November 02, 2023
💡 A Tour of Zoom AI
Recently Zoom launched some built-in AI functionality, and you probably already have access to it for no additional cost.
They call the functionality “AI Companion”, and it’s available to everyone under the entry level paid plan. So if you can currently have meetings longer than 40 minutes, then you’ve got it.
3 things it’ll do for you today:
Meeting Summaries - At the end of the meeting it’ll send out an email to all attendees with a summary of what was discussed
AI Chat Companion - During the meeting, there will be an AI assistant you can ask questions of mid-meeting based on the transcript. Helpful if you’re joining late, have a question about something someone said, or want to generate an outline or list of action items on the fly
Whiteboard Visualization - Use AI to generate visualizations of what’s being discussed on a whiteboard during the meeting
There’s also some new AI sorcery in Zoom’s email and team chat functionality, but nobody actually uses that
Two steps you’ll likely need to take to enable it:
The admin on your Zoom account will have to go to Account Settings > AI Companion to enable it for your organization
Then each user can go to Settings > AI Companion to enable the functionality they want
If you need to be convinced of the importance of AI meeting assistants in firms, check out this podcast episode for some ideas around just how valuable this can be.
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📅 This Week
Top 10 accounting Halloween costumes, from pumpkin patch lady to the brain picker
You know that Nov 1 launch date for Microsoft 365 Copilot we’ve been waiting for? Turns out you can now just ask to get on a list if you’re willing to commit 300 users to the $30/user/mo program 🫠 which reeks of this thing just isn’t good enough yet. If you’re scoring at home we’re now 9 months from the announcement of Copilot
Outlook Copilot will soon(?) let you follow meetings you can’t attend to get a summary, bringing us one step closer to zombie meetings that are only attended by AI assistants
I shared my framework for how to create an AI usage policy
I chatted with Jason Blumer on his Thrivecast pod
ClientHub launched AI-enabled email functionality, now with generative new emails and replies 🏆
This week’s video walks you through how to select a practice management system
How to use MS Power Automate to populate an Excel template - useful for those excel workpapers that can be automated
Bing Chat will now let you export tables directly to Excel
CloudPrompter is a simple teleprompter app that handles transparency over other apps, and remote control of the scroll from another user
Go fill out this State of Accounting AI survey from the folks at Karbon
I was interviewed in the Independent Money newsletter
😍From The Community
My private peer networking community Realize for firm leaders, now capped at 500 members.
11/07 🌴 Take A Step Back with Geraldine Carter
11/17 🏫 Hall Pass - Live Coaching with Brandon Hall
11/21 💘 Setting Client Expectations & Boundaries with Kellie Parks
11/27 🕸️ Into The Chadiverse with Chad Davis
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