ChatGPT, Copilot, and Other AI Tools: How to Use Them at Work Today

AI tools have gone from experimental technology to everyday workhorses. Here’s what actually helps in the work of a system administrator.

Tools I Use Every Day

1. ChatGPT / Claude — a universal assistant

Where it really saves time:

• Writing scripts — I describe the task and get a ready PowerShell/Bash script
• Documentation — «write user instructions for connecting to the VPN»
• Log analysis — I paste a log file and ask it to find the cause of an error
• Drafting technical reports — a first draft in 5 minutes

2. Microsoft Copilot in Office 365

If you have corporate Microsoft 365, Copilot is already built in:

• Word: «Write a technical report on the results of the infrastructure audit»
• Excel: «Build a pivot table of server disk usage across the fleet»
• Outlook: summarizing long email threads into a single sentence
• Teams: transcription and a brief summary of a meeting

3. GitHub Copilot for automation

Indispensable for writing scripts. Just write a comment — and Copilot suggests the code.

# Find all computers in AD that haven't logged in for more than 90 days
# and disable their accounts
$cutoffDate = (Get-Date).AddDays(-90)
Get-ADComputer -Filter {LastLogonDate -lt $cutoffDate -and Enabled -eq $true} |
    Disable-ADAccount -WhatIf

Important Limitations

• Don’t send confidential client data to public AI services
• Always review generated code before running it in production
• AI makes mistakes — the final decision is always yours

What’s Next

By the end of 2026, we can expect AI agents capable of independently performing multi-step tasks: monitoring the network, creating incidents, and even proposing solutions. It’s worth learning these technologies now.

Bottom line: AI won’t replace a specialist, but a specialist with AI will replace one without. Start small — try ChatGPT for writing your next script.