This December is a month for the FIFA World Cup match. ⚽With this hot topic, joined the new technological monster – ChatGPT. 🚀The new ChatGPT has been taking the internet by storm since its testing stage. From yesteryear’s information package to dashing off social media with killer taglines and giving solutions for any sysadmin operations to writing complex code functions in a jiffy, it’s been blowing minds up!
Not just Silicon Valley, but the entire world has been stunned by Open AI’s revolutionary ChatGPT since its beta release. Particularly, this AI chatbot provides instant solutions to every Office 365 operation in a minute, such as scripts, debugging support, etc. Despite this, noticed few Office 365 admins have been pouring hatred over this new chat GPT in fear that it will replace manual work or even replace Google, etc.,
Do we need to really worry about the sudden takeoff of this AI-driven application? Probably, no! IMO, the new AI chatbot is for better prospects. 💯People think that this sudden ripple of ChatGPTs across the world will doom their careers. But the reality is, it’s not! This new sibling of Instruct GPT is a boon to evolving technological advancements.
A Quick Glance on the Sudden Flooding Storm: Chat GPT
Chat GPT, a Natural Language Processing model (NLP) developed by Open AI, stands for Chat Generative Pre-Trained Transformer.
What is ChatGPT?
The ChatGPT is based on natural language techniques that provide answers in a conversational way. Here, users can ask questions, and the AI bot will respond by fetching solutions using artificial intelligence in a way that is cohesive and human-like.
This AI-driven virtual assistant comes with a set of capabilities that could amaze any user. It made a sysadmin’s life easier and here are some ways it assisted with my administrative tasks.
- The first thing is all the responses were in a life-like way. (Human-speech way).
- Typically, sysadmins have lots of work on their hands; when attempting to search on Google, all it listed was a list of blue links. But this chat GPT provided the exact answer in a page, saving a lot of time.
- Helped to debug my erroneous codes! Dropped the complex queries and immediately got one complete solution, debugging everything.
- Furthermore, I requested some PowerShell scripts to automate my Office 365 tenant activities, and it came up with a complete script package. Most of the administrative tasks were simplified and let me concentrate more on patching server issues.
- Not only solved the issues but also explained them with a detailed description, making everything easier to grasp.
- Sometimes sysadmins need to write documentation instructing users to follow security requirements in an organization. Having inputted my requirements, it produced detailed documentation, etc. Though it was not much clear, it somehow eased my work!
- Noticed there were no harmful or violence-triggering responses.
And more on load will be unrevealed when you trigger multiple cases. With everyone picking up their ball, now it was my turn to play hard. So, I asked the AI bot a few simple but slightly complex, mind-twisting Office 365-related questions. Now, let’s talk about what it brought!
An Easy First Check: Find All the Users Available in your Office 365 Tenant
Here’s to playing harder now! As part of the test, I asked the AI bot to get all the users available in the Office 365 tenant. And, it returned an example by using the MSol cmdlets to list all the Office 365 users. Probably, the expected answer from a bot, so check! ✅
Getting Deep: Get All Office 365 Users Using Microsoft Graph
Due to the deprecation of Azure AD and MSol cmdlets on 31st March 2023, it is important to switch over to using Microsoft Graph cmdlets. Unfortunately, we can’t expect this since this AI model was trained on data from more than a year ago. Therefore, it’s not possible to get scripts using Microsoft Graph in the first go!
So, insisted the bot to get all the Office 365 users using Microsoft Graph. And, yes, the result came out with Microsoft Graph usage, so let’s check this as well! ✅
Getting Complex: List the Real Last Logon Time of all Office 365 Users
Now is the trickier one! Before, there were a lot of discussions when computing the last login time of Office 365 users using the LastLogonTime attribute. Because, in general, the LastLogonTime cmdlet also counts the last time a background process like Mailbox Assistant has accessed the mailbox. As this cmdlet is also updated by background tasks, the last logon time reports will be inaccurate.
So, found an alternative property called LastUserActionTime that lists the exact time based on the user’s activities. This LastUserActionTime gets updated when the mailbox has interactions like login into the mailbox, sending an email, or reading an email.
When I asked for a PowerShell script using the LastUserActionTime cmdlet, the AI chatbot came up with the correct answer immediately! ✅
Overall, ChatGPT is doing an amazingly good job in many areas. 👏There is no doubt that this ChatGPT will be useful to all users, especially sysadmins. An example of this would be where administrators are familiar with the concept but cannot figure out how to implement it. In these cases, this ChatGPT can be a savior! Just providing queries in a detailed way will solve all your issues in a minute.
Aside from ChatGPT being a life-saver for Office 365 administrators, we wanted to see how it benefits a full-scale system administrator. So, I tested it and asked for some ways to resolve BSOD errors. And alas, it came up with a solution package! Check here the ChatGPT’s solution for BSOD errors. You’ll be amazed! 💯
Overall, we need to be intelligent enough to ask questions to an AI bot. Depending on how well we tailor the questions, an AI bot will provide clear and detailed answers.
When people came up with,
- Will ChatGPT replace Google?
- ChatGPT is a start to employee layoffs!
- AI bots will replace human work and manual computations.
All the above statements are a complete misperception. Though AI tools have become ubiquitous, no tool can surpass human creativity. Having the ChatGPT is a boon for advancing technology as it can free up people’s time to focus on higher-value tasks like deploying stronger security measures that demand complex thinking and problem-solving.
Although the era of “AI EVERYWHERE” has started, we need to understand the reality that,
Artificial intelligence is a tool, not a threat.
-Rodney Brooks
In conclusion, technology will continue to evolve, and AI chatbots will continue to emerge, but they won’t replace jobs or even Google. Even though ChatGPT has the potential to automate tasks and facilitate work, it is still far from being able to replace creative minds. The main purpose of this AI-driven chat assistant is intended to streamline multiple tasks and improve work progress.
