01 / Microsoft 365 Copilot
Microsoft Copilot free for 30 days - through your IT partner
Microsoft has launched “Copilot in 30”, a partner-led trial that gives businesses with fewer than 300 staff a free 25-user, 30-day run of Microsoft 365 Copilot Business. It's available through Cloud Solution Provider partners - the IT companies most SEQ businesses already buy their Microsoft licensing from - and it runs until 31 December 2026. The pitch from Microsoft is “AI curiosity to adoption in 30 days”, and Australian distributors including Dicker Data are already carrying it.
For most small businesses, the useful bit is this: the main excuse for not testing Copilot properly - roughly $45 per user per month before you know if it's worth anything - is gone for the rest of the year. The catch is that an untargeted trial proves nothing. Twenty-five people poking at a chat box for a month produces shrugs, not decisions.
Owner takeaway: Before asking your IT partner about the trial, pick three specific recurring tasks (say, drafting client emails, summarising meetings, and first-pass quotes) and measure only those for the 30 days.
Sources: Microsoft Partner blog · Dicker Data
02 / Privacy & Compliance
Automated decisions must appear in your privacy policy from 10 December
This one has a date attached. From 10 December 2026, businesses covered by the Privacy Act that use personal information in automated decisions which could significantly affect a person must say so in their privacy policy - what information is used, and what kinds of decisions are made. That covers things like automated credit or tenant screening, algorithmic quoting or pricing approvals, and automated application filtering.
The OAIC ran consultation over winter and intends to publish practical guidance around September, before the obligation starts. Most businesses under $3 million turnover sit outside the Privacy Act and are exempt, but the exceptions matter - health service providers of any size are covered, which pulls in a lot of clinics and allied health practices. This is worth watching, not rushing - but the list-making is worth doing now.
Owner takeaway: Spend an hour this month listing any decision your systems make about people without a human in the middle. If the list isn't empty and you're covered by the Privacy Act, diarise a privacy policy update for October, once OAIC guidance is out.
Sources: OAIC consultation page · White & Case summary
03 / Workflow Automation
Power Automate quietly cut its own licensing bill
Microsoft's July/August Power Platform update shipped two things worth a look. First, flow groups: up to 25 cloud flows can now share a single process licence's daily capacity of 250,000 actions, instead of needing capacity assigned per flow. If your business runs a handful of modest automations - invoice routing, approval chains, notifications - this is a straight licensing consolidation with money attached.
Second, Microsoft released a Power Automate plugin for AI coding agents (GitHub Copilot CLI and Claude Code), which can build, edit and debug flows from a plain-English conversation. That lowers the build cost of automation, whether you build in-house or pay someone like us. The honest caveat: an AI-drafted flow still needs a human review of connections, permissions and failure handling before it touches production data.
Owner takeaway: If you pay for Power Automate process licences, ask whoever manages them whether your flows can be grouped - it's a settings change, not a project.
Sources: Microsoft Power Platform Blog
04 / Everyday Tools
Google will now build a mini-app on top of your spreadsheet
Google has started rolling out Sheets canvas, a Gemini feature that turns a spreadsheet into a custom interactive screen - describe what you want (“a job board grouped by technician, with status buttons”) and it builds a read-write interface layered on the sheet underneath. It began reaching Workspace Business Standard and Plus customers from 10 August, with wider rollout from the end of the month.
Plenty of small businesses effectively run on spreadsheets - leave trackers, job pipelines, stock lists - and the usual next step is buying another subscription app. Canvas offers a middle path: a purpose-built screen without new software or a developer. The limitation is structural: the sheet is still the database. If the spreadsheet is inconsistent - merged cells, mystery columns, three versions of the truth - the mini-app inherits all of it. Do not automate the mess. Map it first.
Owner takeaway: Pick your most-used working spreadsheet and check whether canvas has appeared in the Gemini side panel. The first practical test would be a read-only dashboard before you let it write anything back.
Sources: Google Workspace Updates
What I would do first
If I had to pick one, it's the Copilot trial - not because Copilot is the answer to everything, but because a free, time-boxed, measured trial is exactly how a small business should evaluate any AI tool, and this one now costs nothing but attention. Set it up properly: three tasks, a baseline, and a decision date. And put the automated-decisions list-making on the calendar before December sneaks up.
Running a business that needs someone accountable for technology decisions, not just automations? See the fractional CIO seat.