Drowning in emails? Struggling to summarise a massive document? Microsoft 365 Copilot is here to rescue your business’s productivity. Integrating directly into the Microsoft apps you use daily—Word, Excel, PowerPoint, Outlook, and Teams—this AI-powered tool is here to help you work smarter.
It uses large language models and your Microsoft 365 data to help you with tasks like drafting documents, analysing data, summarising emails, and much more. Think of it as an incredibly knowledgeable, quick thinking and versatile assistant!
Microsoft Copilot launched as Bing Chat in 2023 as an add-in for Bing and Microsoft’s Edge browser. However, Microsoft 365 Copilot represents a big leap forward, transforming workplace productivity by integrating the advanced tool into the apps we use daily.
To help you evaluate how Microsoft 365 Copilot can benefit your organisation, we highlight how it works, its key features and popular use-case scenarios.
How Does Microsoft 365 Copilot Work?
In simple terms, Copilot connects your data, understands what you need, and uses generative AI to help you get tasks done faster within Microsoft 365 apps.
Copilot is integrated directly into all the popular Microsoft 365 apps. It leverages the following to assist you:
- Large Language Models: Microsoft Copilot uses powerful large language models (LLMs) like those behind ChatGPT. These are advanced AI systems trained on extensive datasets to understand complex queries and generate nuanced human-like responses.
- Microsoft Graph: Graph is the gateway to data and intelligence across Microsoft 365 cloud services. This includes all your data such as emails, documents, calendar entries, chats, and more.
- Semantic Index: The semantic index acts like a super-powered search engine. It creates contextuality and an understanding of the relationships between datasets.
Here in four steps is how Coplit combines all these elements to work smartly for you:
- You ask a question or give a command: You might ask Copilot to draft an executive status report of a project you’re working on.
- Microsoft Graph provides the context: Copilot taps into Microsoft Graph to access all the relevant information, including details of the project. It also personalises the context by pulling through information from your emails, chats, and documents.
- The semantic index helps understand the meaning: The semantic index helps Copilot interpret your request accurately and find the most relevant information.
- Large language models generate the response: Copilot uses LLMs to generate a human-like response based on your request and the information from the Graph and Semantic Index.
Note: Copilot’s response will only include information that you have permission to see.
Key Features of Microsoft 365 Copilot
The standout capabilities of Microsoft 365 Copilot include:
- Personalised assistance: Copilot has the ability to personalise responses based on your work emails, chats, documents, and history; it even learns your preferences.
- Smart suggestions: Copilot offers dynamic recommendations for document formatting, phrasing, and content optimisation tailored to your style and voice.
- Automation: It automates mundane tasks such as data entry, document formatting, and email scheduling to save you valuable time.
- Real-time insights: By analysing user behaviour and data patterns, Copilot can deliver insights that improve decision-making and optimise workflows.
Microsoft 365 Copilot Use Cases
Let’s look at popular ways Copilot features are used in different Microsoft 365 apps.
Document creation in Word
You can prompt Copilot to draft documents or create outlines based on specific topics or requirements. For instance, a company director can create a business plan, including historical results and future projections, to show their bank.
Data analysis in Excel
In Excel, Copilot can transform complex datasets into dashboards or other user-friendly visualisations for easier interpretation. It can also suggest formulas to aid data analysis.
Email management in Outlook
You can use Microsoft Copilot in Outlook to summarise lengthy email threads or draft responses based on previous communications. You can also access coaching tips to guide you on message tone, sentiment, and clarity.
Meeting summaries in Teams
After Team meetings, Copilot will conveniently capture the discussion and chart the next steps. The tool can automatically generate summaries, key points, and action lists from all Teams meetups. This is quite a help after a meeting of 1,000 attendees!
Enhancing collaboration in Loop
Loop is a collaborative workspace that allows teams to co-create and stay in sync with shared dynamic content. You can use Copilot to suggest content and then edit for improvement and clarity in real time with your colleagues.
Inspiring presentations in PowerPoint
In PowerPoint, you can use templates to create presentations from simple prompts or a Word file. You can easily make deck-wide formatting changes and request summaries and Q&As.
Task automation with Agents
Copilot allows you to develop scoped agents (automated tools or scripts) to automate repetitive tasks and other business processes. For example, generating help desk tickets or streamlining an approval chain.
Copilot Security and Admin
With integration into Microsoft 365, the Copilot system automatically inherits all of your company’s valuable security, compliance, and privacy policies. Enterprise data protection ensures your sensitive data and user privacy is safeguarded.
Administrators can control who is permitted to access Copilot within any particular app. Additionally, the admin can enable or disable features for specific users or groups via the Microsoft 365 admin centre.
FAQs
What is Microsoft Copilot Chat?
Copilot Chat refers to the conversational AI capabilities integrated within Microsoft 365 Copilot. Chat enables you to interact with Copilot using natural language – asking questions, giving commands, and receiving responses in a chat-like interface.
Is Microsoft Copilot free?
No, Microsoft Copilot costs is an add-on to your Microsoft account and costs over £20 per user per month.
The Way Forward
With the ability to streamline tasks and boost productivity and collaboration, Microsoft 365 Copilot is a valuable tool for businesses looking to optimise operations and efficiency.
If you want to know more about how Microsoft Copilot or the Microsoft 365 suite can help transform your business, don’t hesitate to contact Zenzero. As your professional Microsoft 365 Support partner, we’re always delighted to assist with implementing technology for the future.