Copilot for Microsoft 365: What can it do and where should you start.

Back in November Microsoft released Copilot for Microsoft 365, an AI-powered digital assistant designed to significantly enhance productivity and efficiency. I have been lucky enough to have access to Copilot and I wanted to share some of my observations with you here.

What can it do?

Copilot for Microsoft 365 is integrated with the M365 apps we use every day, such as Word, Excel, PowerPoint, Teams, and Outlook. Here are some examples of what it can do in each of those and some of my experiences using it.

Word

You can use Copilot in Word to:

·??????? draft new documents or add contents to existing documents.

·??????? rewrite text in a document.

·??????? ask questions and gain insights from the document.

·??????? summarise a document.

Drafting documents can be hugely helpful in getting started on something new. I found it helped remove writers block and saved me somewhere between 15-30 minutes of staring at a blank page before making a start on a new document. One thing to be aware of though; quality can vary massively and very much depends on the data Copilot has access to and how you have phrased the prompt. Copilot cannot replace a human, especially for content it is generating itself, it still needs you to go through and check the quality and accuracy.

Rewriting text was equally as useful, you simply select the text you have written, and it will generate 2-3 options of how you could rewrite it, you could even choose to adjust the tone so that it was more neutral, professional, imaginative, casual, or concise.

When faced with a long document, you could chat with Copilot and ask it for key information such as, “List the pros and cons of…”, “What are the actions…”, “Who are the key stakeholders”. One of its best features and something it excels at it is summarising documents. So rather than reading the whole document it could provide a concise summary of the key points and any agreed upon actions.

Teams

You can use Copilot in Teams to:

·??????? Summarise key points during and after a meeting.

·??????? Ask for real-time assistance during a meeting.

·??????? Act as a thought partner.

·??????? Wrap up meetings with clear next steps.

·??????? Recap a meeting.

·??????? Summarise a chat in teams.

Teams was where I found Copilot to be most useful. It was great at summarising long chats that I had to catchup on without having to trawl through every message that had been posted. It was equally as good at providing key information from meetings I hadn’t been able to make. Copilot does a great job of providing key information that was discussed, any actions that were agreed, and any questions that were unanswered. Interestingly it can even tell you the mood and sentiment within the room and even individuals concerns. Where it did provide this information, it always provided a reference you could go straight should you need more detail or context. Think about having the ability to capture a conversation, and then use Copilot to assist you in creating a plan of action, proposal or design based on that discussion, possibly saving you hours of work.

Outlook

You can use Copilot in Outlook to:

·??????? Draft an email message.

·??????? Summarise an email message.

·??????? Email Coaching.

Copilot was useful for summarising long email threads that I’d been copied in on. Now instead of going through the whole history of the thread I could ask Copilot to summarise the key points and actions that had been assigned to me.

It also performed well in drafting emails, as long as it had access to good data. I tested it by asking Copilot to write an email to my team on what to focus on for the next quarter, and I told it to use our product roadmap as a reference. The draft message it gave me in this case was correct, pertinent, concise, and clear.

The email coaching feature evaluates text you have already written for tone, sentiment, and clarity. It can give you feedback on various aspects of your writing, such as the level of formality, the degree of confidence, or the clarity of your message and evidence. This would be great for verifying the tone of emails sent to customers and colleagues.

PowerPoint

You can use Copilot in PowerPoint to:

·??????? Create a new presentation.

·??????? Add a slide or image.

·??????? Summarise your presentation.

·??????? Use your organisations branding.

I got mixed results when using Copilot to create PowerPoint presentations. I gave it the prompt “Please create a presentation on automation for a broad audience. ?It should include benefits, use cases and how to get started”. The first attempt had relevant content, but design choices were poor, it placed blue text on a blue background image making it unreadable. A second attempt I ran a few days later yielded better results. This time the formatting was much cleaner and easier to read.

Excel

You can use Copilot in Excel to:

·??????? Identify Insights.

·??????? Highlight, sort, and filter data.

·??????? Generate column formulas.

The first thing to note is that the data must be in a table format. Once that’s done you can use Copilot to start identifying insights and generating data visualisations. Given a long list of commercial data for our products for example, I could ask it to highlight the top 10 selling products over 2023, or to generate a chart that displayed actual sales vs predicted sales.

Where should you start.

There are several things to consider before rolling out Copilot.

First security and data access. Copilot doesn’t give you access to any data you didn’t have before; it inherits all the permissions you already have. However, it’s a lot easier to find data now, so the consequences of someone inadvertently sharing data with you that they shouldn’t are a lot more obvious.

Before rolling Copilot out it’s critical to ensure business data is classified and that strong access controls are in place. As a bare minimum you need Multifactor Authentication, data sensitivity labels, and the correct access controls to your data in place. The recommendation is to work towards applying the principles of Zero Trust to your data and your tenant. This is no mean feat and can be time consuming but nevertheless must be done.

With security and data governance in place you need to make sure your users are getting the most out of Copilot. At $30 per user per month, and a minimum commit of 12 months Copilot it is a significant investment when deployed at scale. It’s key that users who are assigned a Copilot license are trained on its capabilities and how best to use it. Even then there is a certain level of intuition that needs to be built up by experience. You have to get a feel for what tasks it is good at and what it’s not, and how to construct your prompts to get the best information out of it.

With that level of investment in a tool it’s important to ensure you’re getting a return. A good way to start the rollout would be to identify individuals and groups that you feel would benefit most from Copilot. Before giving them Copilot to use, spend some time with them and work out what their day-to-day looks like and what tasks Copilot could help them with. Work with them to put estimates on some of their most common tasks. Once you have your baselines you have something to measure Copilot's performance again.

Conclusion

For me Copilot is a powerful addition to the tool set. I would say it’s saved me around 3-4 hours a week during the time I’ve had it, not bad for a $30 investment. I can easily see that increasing as I get more experience and as its own capabilities increase. Most of my time savings have been 15-30 minutes here and there, marginal gains that add up over the course of weeks, months, and years. These savings could be significantly higher for people carrying out well defined repeatable tasks.

It was particularly strong at retrieving information quickly, summarising meetings, teams chats and emails I needed to catch up on, and it’s been great for getting me started on documentation. It does have its limitations though; you need check everything it produces for quality and accuracy. It’s not going to replace a human, but it is going to augment their skillset and boost their productivity.

Finally, with great power comes great responsibility. It's imperative that correct security and governance guardrails are put in place before rolling Copilot out. Users must be educated on how to make best use of Copilot, and more importantly not to blindly accept every recommendation it makes.