Last updated: September 25, 2026
Welcome to your digital project office. This handbook explains what the GIABO Digital PMO can do for your team, how to talk to it in Microsoft 365 Copilot and Teams, and which governance rules stay in place so a locked plan is never changed in silence.
GIABO is an autonomous digital employee for project administration. It is a team of 27 specialists, not a single chatbot. Each request is handed to the right specialist, the result is saved to your project record, and a person is asked to decide whenever a locked plan or a stage tolerance is at stake.
You meet GIABO in two places. They share the same project record; they are not the same conversation.
Use Copilot to stand up a project, request a governance brief, or check plan usage. You will never be asked for an internal identifier. Start with Set up a new project, Give me the project brief, or Check my usage and billing tier.
Chat with the digital employee to log progress, raise a blocker, flag a risk, or request a change to the locked plan. A proposed plan change pauses as an approval card for the Project Manager.
The office keeps your RAID log current (risks, assumptions, issues, and dependencies), keeps the schedule honest, follows up on work that is actually overdue, and refuses silent plan changes. It does not replace the Project Manager. It will not approve its own change.
Four capabilities you will notice in day-to-day work. The rest of the team supports them behind the scenes.
Tell GIABO how many hours you spent and how complete the task is. The schedule specialist records progress only. It will not invent a new end date or budget.
Impediments and cross-team waits go to the Agile facilitator. You get a recorded blocker and a next step — not a progress rewrite, and not a plan change.
Budget, scope, timeline, and compliance concerns are scored against the stage tolerance you already agreed. A real breach raises an exception card. A risk that is still inside tolerance is logged, not escalated for drama.
Follow-ups are prioritized, not blasted. If someone was contacted in the last 24 hours, GIABO stays quiet — even when the work sits on the critical path.
Specialists you talk to first; everyone else works in the background or as a safety check.
| Role | How they help |
|---|---|
| Conversation guide | Sends each Teams message to schedule, Agile, governance, change control, or a person. |
| Schedule specialist | Records hours, percent complete, and whether the work is on the critical path. |
| Agile facilitator | Records blockers and the next step to unblock the team. |
| Governance specialist | Scores the risk and whether a stage tolerance is breached. Does not pause the conversation itself. |
| Change Control Clerk | The only role that may draft a change to the locked plan. Cannot approve it. |
| Chasing specialist | Sends a Teams check-in when follow-up is warranted; stays silent for 24 hours after last contact. |
| Role | How they help |
|---|---|
| Exception master | Records a formal decision when a stage tolerance is breached. |
| RAID compliance chaser | Keeps assumptions, issues, and actions up to date without creating duplicates. |
| Risk radar | Tracks risks and dependencies. Available on the Pro Plan; not included in the Free 14-Day Trial. |
| Lessons curator | Records lessons learned only. Will not touch budget or the locked plan. |
| Dependency map | Maintains dependencies only. Will not rewrite task progress. |
| Scrum liaison | Keeps sprint records. Available on the Pro Plan; not included in the Free 14-Day Trial. |
| Role | How they help |
|---|---|
| Alignment engine | Checks that aims, goals, and objectives still connect (the Golden Thread). |
| Earned value analyst | Reports schedule and cost performance. Does not change tasks or the locked plan. |
| Governance synthesizer | Writes a RAID summary. Does not add new RAID entries. |
| Stage-gate guardian | Escalates a tolerance breach. Does not rewrite the budget. |
| Health reporter | Produces a status narrative only. |
| Role | How they help |
|---|---|
| PMO commander | Reads SharePoint changes and assigns the right specialists. Scheduled reviewers are not part of that conversation. |
| Governance auditor | Runs a scheduled governance review. Not a Teams chat persona. |
| Month-end checkpoint | Produces the end-of-month financial record on a schedule. |
| Sprint watchdog | Flags an overdue sprint boundary on a schedule. |
| SharePoint intake | Brings new documents and meeting notes into the project record automatically. |
| Role | How they help |
|---|---|
| Billing guardian | Pauses work when the trial has ended or a paid subscription is paused, before any further usage. |
| Clarity check | Two vague replies in a row escalate to a person, even if a specialist was about to answer. |
| Quality stop | Stops the turn after three failed attempts to produce a valid answer. |
| Project Manager approval | Holds a drafted plan change until a person approves or declines. |
| Exception hold | Holds a tolerance breach until a person acknowledges it or escalates to the board. |
You do not need slash commands. Write a normal sentence that includes the facts. GIABO routes from those facts. You do not need an internal project number unless you already have one and choose to use it.
| You say | What happens | What you receive |
|---|---|---|
| Set up a new project plus a short name (and optional SharePoint site or digital-employee name) | Creates the project | A project card. Use View Governance Brief on the card to open that project. |
| Give me the project brief | Builds the brief | Open risks, open actions, and a short activity log. |
| Check my usage and billing tier | Reads your plan | Whether you are on the Free 14-Day Trial or the Pro Plan, workspace health, project count, and usage versus allowance. |
Creating a project needs a project name. If you only tap the starter, add a name in the next sentence (for example Set up a new project called Harbour Cutover). If this workspace is not linked yet, Copilot will say so — it will not invent an organization for you.
| You say (examples) | Who answers | What is recorded |
|---|---|---|
| Logged 6 hours today; the cutover task is 40% complete. | Schedule specialist | Task progress only. The locked plan is untouched. |
| The cutover task is blocked waiting on Legal to sign the DPA. | Agile facilitator | A blocker and a next action. Progress percent is not rewritten. |
| Stage 2 forecast is 15% over the 10% cost tolerance. | Governance specialist | A risk score. An exception card appears only if the tolerance is actually breached. |
| Please change the locked plan end date to 1 September 2027. | Change Control Clerk | A proposal. The Project Manager must approve the card before anything is written. |
| not sure, whatever you think (twice) | Clarity check | The conversation is escalated to a person. |
| Request | What GIABO does instead |
|---|---|
| Asking the Clerk to “check the risk of slipping the date” | The Clerk records only what changes on the plan (date or budget). Risk questions go to governance, in a separate turn. |
| Asking schedule, Agile, or risk specialists to “just move the plan” | Only the Clerk drafts a plan change. Everyone else is kept away from the locked baseline. |
| Typing “approved” to authorize your own plan change | Approval is the Project Manager card, not a chat message. |
You steer what GIABO works on by how you write. You cannot change the office rules with a chat message. There is no settings page today that stores chaser aggressiveness or a numeric tolerance slider.
| Intent | How to say it | What happens |
|---|---|---|
| Name the work | Set up a new project called North Pier, SharePoint site … | Creates the project. Optional digital-employee name and email become the persona used in Teams and Outlook. |
| Share a document | Put the file in the linked SharePoint library | GIABO picks it up automatically. No extra Copilot command is required. |
| Correct a fact | Send the updated hours, percent, or blocker in Teams | The specialist updates the latest record of that type. History stays in your project record. |
| Ask not to be chased | Reply to a chase (any reply counts as contact) | The 24-hour quiet window starts again. You cannot set that window to two hours or seven days in chat. |
| Office rule | Why it stays fixed |
|---|---|
| 24-hour quiet window on chases | No follow-up is sent if someone was contacted in the last day, even after a critical-path slip. |
| The Clerk never evaluates risk | A plan-change draft describes the date or budget movement only. Risk discovery belongs to governance. |
| Background specialists never draft plan changes | When governance wakes after a proposed slip, it classifies RAID. It does not edit the pending change. |
| Project Manager approval is not bypassed | Follow-up work never resumes a paused approval. Declining a change does not auto-rewrite it. |
| Stage tolerance is classified, not bargained | Governance uses the facts you gave. There is no “set my tolerance to 20%” setting in chat. |
| Free 14-Day Trial vs Pro Plan specialists | Risk Radar and Scrum Liaison stay on the Pro Plan. That is a plan entitlement, not a prompt you can override. |
| Billing pause outranks everyone | If the trial has ended or the subscription is paused, no specialist continues — including background follow-ups. |
A different quiet window or a saved tolerance table would be a product change — not something the digital employee can grant itself. Until then, be precise (the task, the hours, the percent, the locked field you want changed) and let the Project Manager use the approval card.