If it seems like AI technology is growing more advanced every day, it’s not your imagination. New AI features and innovations are being revealed at a remarkable rate, which brings us to the latest AI announcement: Microsoft 365 Copilot.
Let’s look at this new AI tool, what it does, and how Microsoft hopes it will change the way we work.
What is Copilot?
Microsoft 365 Copilot is a new AI assistant and productivity tool that, as the name suggests, works across the Microsoft 365 portfolio to help users with their daily work.
The AI can pull from Word documents, Excel spreadsheets, Office emails, and other Microsoft 365 apps to gather data in real time, using natural language processing to understand and execute tasks.
The Copilot System, which powers the AI, is a processing and orchestration engine that uses Large Language Models, data in the Microsoft Graph (which contains data like a user’s emails, files, and chats), and the Microsoft 365 apps, all through natural language processing. (While Microsoft has invested heavily in ChatGPT, that’s only a piece of what makes Copilot work.)
Microsoft states that Copilot is built with a comprehensive approach to security, compliance, privacy, and responsible AI to make sure that it’s secure and ready for enterprise use.
How can you use Copilot?
Users feed Copilot prompts through a command in the app they’re using, which the AI then carries out within Microsoft 365. Once Copilot creates a draft, users can keep it as is, request adjustments, edit it themselves, or have Copilot start again from scratch. This is designed to help automate tasks, compile information, and provide users with good starting points for their projects while still making sure that humans have the final say.
Copilot can also edit existing documents or sections. This goes beyond a spelling and grammar check and can include entire rewrites to make sections more concise or incorporate new data.
In the introductory video, Microsoft demonstrated several uses for Copilot, including:
- Preparing for upcoming meetings based on information from notes and emails
- Creating a product announcement in Microsoft Word
- Tranforming a Word document into a PowerPoint presentation
- Analyzing data from an Excel spreadsheet
- Drafting emails in Microsoft Office
- Providing meeting notes and summaries in Microsoft Teams
You can see the video for yourself here:
Copilot is designed to carry out tasks within all of Microsoft 365’s apps, and can carry data between each app. So, if a user needs to pull information from an Excel spreadsheet for an Outlook email, Copilot can do that.
Teams
Copilot can follow meetings to take notes and create summaries that highlight key moments from the conversation. This way, if an attendee is late or has to miss the meeting, they’ll still get the notes and a recap.
Copilot can break down these notes to provide more detail, including quotes from transcripts. Users can also ask Copilot questions during a Teams meeting to gain extra context or remind them of information and tasks.
During calls with clients, Copilot can offer suggestions to answer questions in real time, based on the user’s sales material.
Business Chat
Business Chat is a new feature introduced with Copilot. Users can access it through Microsoft 365, Bing, or Teams, as it works across all of a user’s Microsoft 365 apps, files, and media to gather information and content to find all the pertinent information they need. Business Chat can break down important information into their key details or compile it all into a single place.
For instance, users can use Business Chat to ask Copilot to gather data from multiple spreadsheets and compile an analysis. Then, it can create a presentation made from that data. This helps automate and streamline note taking, gathering files, analyzing data, and so on, which helps save users time and energy.
Like all other AI models, Copilot can make mistakes. As such, users are strongly encouraged to review everything it creates and make edits, or use Copilot’s creation as a jumping-off point. Users should think of Copilot as an assistant providing a first draft, which still needs to undergo internal review.
While Copilot has just recently been announced, it stands as a useful AI tool for helping Microsoft 365 users with their communications and documents. Users just need to remember that its purpose is to help with their work, not do it all for them.
Outlook
While many email platforms provide suggested replies and prompts based on conversational data and natural language processing, Copilot takes this a step further by helping write entire messages. Users can use Copilot in Microsoft Outlook to quickly draft emails and replies.
For instance, if a user told Copilot “Send my team the latest project updates, and remind them that our weekly all-hands meeting is pushed back,” Copilot would generate an email based on the prompt by drawing information from other documents and emails. If the all-hands meeting was pushed to Wednesday, it could find that information in the calendar and specify the where and when in the email draft.
The user can then make any adjustments they like, attach files, and send the email.
Copilot can also help users sort through their emails by highlighting high-priority messages, summarizing long email threads, or searching for information buried in the inbox. This works on the mobile Outlook app as well.
Word
Perhaps one of the biggest uses for Copilot is in Microsoft Word. Users can give Copilot a prompt, such as “create a proposal for this client” or “write a press release for our upcoming announcement,” and Copilot can draft a Word document based on internal documents and discussions.
From there, users can give Copilot additional instructions, such as adjusting the formatting, inserting images, or adding additional information. It can also provide suggestions for ways to strengthen existing documents.
PowerPoint
Similarly, if a user wants to create a PowerPoint presentation, they can use “Create with Copilot” in a blank document, provide details or specific requests, and have Copilot generate the presentation.
Copilot will gather information, photos, and data to compile into a presentation, which can include specific templates, animations, and speaker notes.
Excel
Copilot can also help populate and analyze Excel spreadsheets. Users can ask Copilot to identify trends, run calculations in an existing spreadsheet, create charts and graphs based on available data. It can also analyze the data and provide summaries explaining how it came to its conclusions, helping businesses gain actionable insights.
Copilot can also create new sheets using data from the original to provide additional breakdowns and analytics without changing the original Excel document.
Viva
The next-generation AI will begin rolling out to Microsoft Viva customers later this year, combining large language models (LLMs) with company data in Microsoft Graph and Viva apps to give leaders a new means of engaging with their workforce.
Copilot will also come to the newly adopted “voice of the employee” solution, Viva Glint, providing team managers with summaries and analysis of thousands of employee comments, which they can explore with questions using natural language.
Copilot also helps Viva Goals users by consolidating data to create comprehensive check-ins, enabling teams to access knowledge from disparate sources.
Microsoft’s 2023 State of the Goal Setting Report found that 50 percent of practitioners surveyed said that greater goal clarity gives them more motivation and a greater sense of purpose. Only 39 percent of practitioners understand organisational goals, however, opening the door to solutions such as Copilot.
