Microsoft announces 365 Copilot – AI integrated into Office 365

At m-hance we understand the passion and drive that fuels those in the charity sector to make a difference in the world. However, we also recognise the burden of mundane tasks that can distract from this purpose. That’s why we believe in leveraging the power of cutting-edge technology to help you achieve your goals and bring your vision to life.

We are thrilled by the latest announcement from Microsoft, with the introduction of Microsoft 365 Copilot – a personal work assistant that uses the latest advancements in AI technology to revolutionise the way you work. By integrating large language models (LLMs) with the Microsoft Graph[JT1]? (Microsoft’s gateway to all organisational data generated by users) and the Microsoft 365 suite, Copilot transforms your everyday work tasks into a seamless and productive experience.

Satya Nadella, Chairman and CEO of Microsoft, said, “Today marks the next major step in the evolution of how we interact with computing, which will fundamentally change the way we work and unlock a new wave of productivity growth. With our new Copilot for work, we’re giving people more agency[JT2]? and making technology more accessible through the most universal interface — natural language.”

With Copilot, you can optimise your workflow within the Microsoft 365 suite, including Word, Excel, PowerPoint, Outlook, Teams, and more. In addition, Microsoft is also releasing Business Chat, a ground-breaking new experience that integrates LLMs, Microsoft 365 apps, and your data (calendar, emails, chats, documents, meetings, and contacts) to streamline your work processes. Simply provide natural language prompts, such as “Tell my team how we updated the product strategy,” and Copilot will generate a status update based on the latest meetings, emails, and chat threads.

At m-hance, we believe in empowering you to take charge of your work. Copilot provides you with the flexibility to modify or discard its suggestions and enables you to unleash your creativity, analytical skills, and collaborative potential. With Microsoft 365 Copilot, you can focus on what really matters – making a positive impact in the world.

Microsoft 365 Copilot is a tool that transforms work in three significant ways.

First, Copilot unleashes creativity by jumpstarting the creative process, so you never have to start with a blank slate again. With Copilot in Word, you can save hours of writing, sourcing, and editing time by getting a first draft to edit and iterate on. Copilot in PowerPoint helps you create beautiful presentations with relevant content from a document you made last week or last year. And with Copilot in Excel, you can analyse trends and create professional-looking data visualisations in seconds.

Second, Copilot unlocks productivity by helping you focus on the 20% of work that really matters. With Copilot in Outlook, you can quickly draft suggested replies and summarise long email threads, clearing your inbox in minutes. In Teams, Copilot can summarise key discussion points, suggest action items, and make every meeting productive. And with Copilot in Power Platform, anyone can automate repetitive tasks and create chatbots, saving valuable time.

Third, Copilot uplevels skills by making you better at what you're good at and letting you quickly master what you've yet to learn. Using natural language, all the rich functionality of Microsoft 365 is unlocked, even for those who only use a handful of commands.

But Copilot doesn't just supercharge individual productivity. It creates a new knowledge model for every organisation, harnessing the massive reservoir of data and insights that lies largely inaccessible and untapped today. Business Chat works across all your business data and apps to surface the information and insights you need from a sea of data, so knowledge flows freely across the organisation.

We believe that Copilot will fundamentally change how people work with AI and how AI works with people. Embracing this new way of working will quickly give your organisation an edge, helping you achieve your goals more efficiently and effectively.

The Copilot System: Enterprise-ready AI

We are a proud Microsoft Gold Partner specialising the charity sector. We believe there will be numerous possibilities for our customers to make best use of the Copilot System, a cutting-edge enterprise-ready AI solution that combines the power of LLMs, including GPT-4, with the Microsoft 365 apps and your business data in the Microsoft Graph.

Copilot is more than just OpenAI's ChatGPT embedded into Microsoft 365. It is a sophisticated processing and orchestration engine that generates accurate, relevant, and contextual responses anchored in your business content and working context. By providing real-time access to both your content and context in the Microsoft Graph, Copilot connects LLMs to your business data in a secure, compliant, and privacy-preserving way.

Built on Microsoft's comprehensive approach to security, compliance, and privacy, Copilot is integrated into Microsoft 365 and automatically inherits your company's valuable security, compliance, and privacy policies and processes. With a time-tested permissioning model and the ability to present only data you can access, Copilot is designed to protect tenant, group, and individual data, ensuring that data won't leak across user groups.

Copilot is also integrated into the productivity apps millions of people use and rely on every day for work and life, such as Word, Excel, PowerPoint, Outlook, Teams, and more. Its intuitive and consistent user experience ensures it looks, feels, and behaves the same way in Teams as it does in Outlook, with a shared design language for prompts, refinements, and commands.

In addition, Copilot is designed to learn new skills. With Viva Sales, for example, Copilot can learn how to connect to CRM systems of record to pull customer data, like interaction and order histories, into communications. As Copilot learns about new domains and processes, it will be able to perform even more sophisticated tasks and queries.

At m-hance, we are confident that the Copilot System will revolutionise productivity and enhance your organisation's performance. Trust us to deliver enterprise-ready AI with Copilot.

Embracing AI Responsibly

We share a commitment with Microsoft to building AI capabilities responsibly. Microsoft's AI principles and Responsible AI Standard, combined with their decades of research on AI, ground-breaking and privacy-preserving machine learning, ensure that their AI systems are designed with potential harms and mitigations in mind. Their multidisciplinary team of researchers, engineers, and policy experts constantly reviews their AI systems and applies Microsoft technologies to help detect and correct data bias.

We are excited to see Microsoft bringing Copilot to all their productivity apps, including Word, Excel, PowerPoint, Outlook, Teams, Viva, Power Platform, and more. As a Microsoft Gold Partner specialising in CRM for the charity sector, we are especially thrilled about the Dynamics 365 Copilot, the world's first AI Copilot in both CRM and ERP. We believe that Microsoft 365 Copilot can help our customers find purpose and meaning in their work. Microsoft have not yet announced when Copilot will be made generally available to all customers though they are currently testing it with a small group of 20 customers to improve the models as Copilot scales up.

To learn more about Microsoft 365 Copilot, visit the Microsoft 365 blog, and for expert insights on how AI will create a brighter future of work for everyone, visit WorkLab. Finally, for all the blogs, videos, and assets related to today's announcements, please visit Microsoft’s microsite. As a Microsoft Gold Partner, we are committed to helping our customers harness the power of AI responsibly and effectively to achieve their goals.