@WonderLaura

Artificial intelligence (AI) is changing the way we work, communicate, and create, and it all seems to be happening so quickly! Microsoft 365 is on the forefront, with its awesome AI-powered features and tools. One of the coolest and most useful things in Microsoft 365 is Copilot, a brand new, sort of personal assistant that helps you work smarter, faster, and better with data, emails, documents, and collaboration, naturally in the way you work every day.

Copilot is not just a single app or service, but an integrated solution that works across different Microsoft 365 apps. Whether you use Word, Excel, PowerPoint, Outlook, or Teams, Copilot can help you boost your productivity, give you personalized assistance, and help you make smarter decisions. In this post, I’ll show you how Copilot is transforming the way we work, and I’ll give you some practical examples of how you can use it to simplify workflows, improve your creative processes, and increase your overall efficiency in your daily tasks. This is just scratching the surface, but I’d like to shed light on how you can get started with this new technology, naturally.

Office.com is one of the first places that you may notice Copilot. Click the icon on the left, and this screen gives you ideas for prompts (questions to ask it). Of course, you can type anything you’d like, in the prompt box at the bottom, and you’ll also see a list of your recent prompts. You can see that I’ve been asking it to find certain files for me, find a specific email I sent, and even write tweets for me.

The exact same screen exists in Microsoft Teams, on the Chats screen, above your chats.

Working with data

Data central to every business, but it can also be overwhelming and complicated to manage and analyze. Copilot makes it easier and faster to work with data in Microsoft 365 by giving you intelligent insights, suggestions, and automation.

All you have to do, is with a table of data, put your cursor in that table, and click the Copilot button on the Home tab. Notice here, that I asked it how many discontinued items there are. It will also suggest questions to ask, such as “Are there any outliers in my data?”

Copilot also works with Power BI, to help you create stunning and interactive data visualizations and dashboards. This is perfect for me, because I get a bit overwhelmed when presented with all of the visualization possibilities when building a report. You can easily import your data from Excel or other sources, and use Copilot to design and customize your visuals, apply filters and slicers, and ask questions in natural language. Of course, then you can publish and share your Power BI reports with others, and access them from any device. Power BI in my tenant does not have Copilot just yet, but here is Microsoft’s Overview of Copilot for Power BI (Preview) with screenshots and instructions.

Copilot can Write Emails

Email is one of the most widely used communication tools in the workplace, but it can also be a serious source of stress and distraction. Copilot helps manage emails in Outlook more efficiently by giving you smart features and tools. When writing a new email, notice the Copilot button at the top. If I’d like, I can choose to Draft with Copilot. Give it a general or succinct idea of what the email should say, and even set the tone, and it will write the email, which you can edit before sending.

With the Coaching by Copilot button, type in at least 100 characters of an email, and it will give you coaching for a better, more well-crafted email. Think about difficult emails that you really don’t feel like writing, and don’t know how to say. Here’s an example: “I’m sorry, but your check has bounced. We cannot provide the product that you are purchasing, until we receive payment.” I typed that in my email and then clicked Coaching by Copilot. Here’s what it suggests. Nice!

In Outlook when reading emails in your inbox, there is also a button to summarize an email, which gives you sort of a Cliff Notes version of it.

Preparing documents

Documents are the backbone of any professional or academic project, and there could be millions of them in your company, but they can also be challenging and time-consuming to create and format. Copilot helps you prepare documents in Word more quickly and easily. It also helps you read and consume files more efficiently with the Summarize this doc button. I don’t know anything about architecture, but I just asked it to generate questions to ask an architect at a job interview. Notice the Copilot panel on the right lets me know other things I can do, like summarize the document.

Copilot also helps you collaborate and share your documents with others, by letting you co-author and comment in real-time, track changes and revisions, and protect your documents with passwords and permissions. You can also access and edit your documents from any device, with the Word mobile app or the Word Online web app.

Copilot in Teams Chats

Is Microsoft Teams your hub for everything at work? Copilot can be used when chatting! While in a chat, type your chat first, and before sending it, click the little Copilot (purple) icon next to the emoji button. This lets you rewrite your chat. In this example, I typed “I can’t come to work today, I’m sick.” You’ll see this adjust button a lot in Copilot. I can pick how I’d like it to sound.

When I chose to make it longer, it gave me “Unfortunately, I have to inform you that I am unwell and unable to attend work today. I apologize for any inconvenience this may cause and I hope to recover soon.”

Creating Presentations with Copilot

Copilot can also help you create amazing presentations with PowerPoint. It can generate slides, text, images, charts, and more based on your input and preferences. Here are some ways you can use Copilot with PowerPoint:

• Use natural language to describe what you want to show on each slide. For example, you can type “show a pie chart of sales by region” or “compare the features of product A and product B”. Copilot will try to understand your intent and generate the appropriate content for you.
• Create a presentation from an existing file. Take your quarterly marketing report Word document, and see what presentation it creates for you.
• When reading a presentation and short on time, click the button to summarize this presentation
• Get Copilot to organize the presentation for you. It will suggest sections, and will put them in the right order.

I just asked Copilot to create a presentation about butterflies. Voila! Also notice that familiar Copilot button in the ribbon and the Copilot panel down the right, where I can ask it questions and fine tune my masterpiece.

Copilot in Power Apps and Power Automate

Copilot also helps you integrate and automate your workflows across different Microsoft 365 apps, by letting you use Power Automate, the workflow automation platform in Microsoft 365, to create and run flows that connect your apps and services, and perform actions based on triggers and conditions. You can also use Copilot in Power Apps, the app development platform in Microsoft 365, to create and customize your own apps, without coding, and use them on any device. Here are a couple of videos that I have created, showing how to use these tools.

Conclusion

Copilot is a powerful and versatile personal assistant that helps you harness the power of AI in Microsoft 365, and boost your productivity, creativity, and efficiency. By working across different Microsoft 365 apps, it gives you intelligent insights, suggestions, and automation, and helps you work smarter, faster, and better with data, emails, documents, and collaboration. Whether you are a business owner, a professional, a student, or a personal user, you can use this amazing new product to simplify your work, save time, improve your creative processes, and increase your overall performance in your daily tasks. There are many more places in Microsoft 365 where you can use this technology, so hopefully these few examples I’ve given will show you some easy and natural ways to get started.

This product is a separate license, and currently it can only be licensed for a whole year. If you do not see Copilot in your tenant, most likely the company has not purchased it. I do have a way, if you’d like Copilot, as part of my Ultimate PLUS training plan, during checkout there is an option to add Copilot to your IW Mentor student account.