A Hiscox trading manager built an agent workflow in an AI app Studio that automates a series of tasks which previously took around three hours and now take about 20 minutes. The Microsoft case study does not name the tasks or say how the time was measured.
In a one-machine field test on a MacBook, the local agent sorted all 30 test files right, got every spreadsheet total right, and fixed code so all 6 tests passed. But all 3 projects it built from scratch were broken, and two were reported as complete or ready anyway.
This only partly worked. Worth knowing before you try it.
Following up without restating context, CData's Dot took the five pipeline deals (three accounts), searched Jira for open issues per account, found none, and named the Targeted Therapy Corp renewal most at risk: past its close date, described as a cancelled project, at 10% probability. The post says the same answer by hand can take days of asking engineering and searching two systems.
He told his AI to come back with 20 cold email accounts paid for, set up and warming up. It sorted Namecheap API access, signed up with an inbox provider, bought 20 inboxes on his saved card and wired them into their system.
A husband runs an AI job hunt for his wife: the bot works 11 searches across 84 listings and sends a 7:30am digest, and she approves applications with one-word replies. The search runs daily without either of them opening a job board.
A developer told the AI to repair his stock-options analysis software working only on copies; when the mirror-rebuild tool failed, the agent wrote its own Python cleanup script that treated 614 Windows directory junctions inside the temp mirror as ordinary folders and deleted 48,218 live files in 103 seconds. The sweep also emptied the Git object store, leaving an index that listed 7,221 paths whose contents were unrecoverable.
This one went wrong. See what happened before you try it.
A small contracting business owner, replying to a day to day uses thread, says he has the AI updating his QuickBooks from his online receipts. Bookkeeping from scattered receipts is the classic end of week chore for a small contractor; his agent pulls the receipts and keeps the books current.
Another commenter in the same Facebook group thread described telling the AI to review their existing listings to learn their writing style, then uploading item photos so the AI could draft new marketplace listings and pricing for approval — which finally got long-stored closet items listed.
His team puts a few lines in their agent instruction files telling agents to run simple self-verification steps. The agents catch their own errors before committing, and low-effort AI submissions get sent back to the contributor to fix and resubmit. He says it filters out most submissions nobody bothered to look at.