How Microsoft 365 Copilot can help you work smarter and faster

Do you ever feel overwhelmed by the amount of information and tasks you have to deal with every day? Do you wish you had a personal assistant that could help you with your daily work, such as summarizing meetings, emails, chats, creating reports, emails, analyzing data, writing job descriptions, and more? If you answered yes, then you might want to check out Microsoft 365 Copilot, a new AI-powered tool that can help you work smarter and faster.

Microsoft 365 Copilot is a cloud-based service that integrates with your Microsoft 365 apps, such as Outlook, Teams, Word, Excel, PowerPoint, and more. It uses natural language processing and machine learning to understand your context, intent, and preferences, and provide you with relevant suggestions and insights. You can use Copilot to perform various tasks:

• Summarize meetings you couldn’t attend: If you miss a meeting, you can ask Copilot to give you a summary of what was discussed, what decisions were made, and what actions were assigned. You can also ask Copilot to create a follow-up email, or a meeting invite based on the summary.
• Summarize emails in your inbox: If you have a lot of emails to read after some time off for instance, you can ask Copilot to scan your inbox and give you a summary of the most important messages, along with the key points, attachments, and actions. You can also ask Copilot to reply to the emails or create tasks based on the summary.
• Analyze your Teams chats: If you have a lot of conversations on Teams, you can ask Copilot to analyze your chats and give you insights on the topics, sentiments, trends, and patterns. You can also ask Copilot to create summaries, reports, or presentations based on the analysis.
• Create draft emails, reports, and executive summaries: If you need to write an email, a report, or an executive summary, you can ask Copilot to help you with the content, structure, and tone. You can provide Copilot with some keywords, bullet points, or outlines, and Copilot will generate a draft for you. You can then edit, refine, and personalize the draft as you like.
• Analyze and visualize data: If you need to work with data, you can ask Copilot to help you with the analysis and visualization. You can provide Copilot with some data sources, such as Excel files, SharePoint lists, or Power BI reports, and Copilot will automatically detect the data types, relationships, and patterns. You can then ask Copilot to create charts, graphs, tables, or dashboards based on the data.
• Write job descriptions and interview questions: If you need to hire someone, you can ask Copilot to help you with the job description and the interview questions. You can provide Copilot with some information about the role, such as the title, the responsibilities, the skills, and the qualifications, and Copilot will generate a job description for you. You can also ask Copilot to create some interview questions based on the job description.
• Write opinion pieces: If you need to write an opinion piece, such as a blog post, an article, or a review, you can ask Copilot to help you with the content, structure, and tone. You can provide Copilot with some information about the topic, such as the title, the main points, the arguments, and the evidence, and Copilot will generate an opinion piece for you. You can then edit, refine, and personalize the opinion piece as you like.

These are just some of the examples of how Microsoft 365 Copilot can help you work smarter and faster. You can also customize Copilot to suit your needs and style, by providing feedback, ratings, and preferences. Copilot will learn from your input and improve over time.

To illustrate how Copilot works, let’s look at a scenario involving three different roles: a CFO, an HR manager, and a marketing person. They all use Copilot to help them with their daily work, as follows:

• The CFO uses Copilot to summarize the quarterly financial report that he received from his team. He asks Copilot to give him a one-page executive summary of the report, highlighting the key metrics, trends, and insights. Copilot scans the report and generates a summary for him, which he can then review and share with the board of directors.
• The HR Manager uses Copilot to write a job description and interview questions for a new position that she needs to fill. She asks Copilot to help her with the job description, providing some information about the role, such as the title, the responsibilities, the skills, and the qualifications. Copilot creates a job description for her, which she can then edit and post on the company website. She also asks Copilot to help her with the interview questions, providing some information about the job description. Copilot creates some interview questions for her, which she can then use to screen the candidates.
• The Marketing person uses Copilot to write a blog post for the company blog. He asks Copilot to help him with the content, providing some information about the topic, such as the title, the main points, the arguments, and the evidence. Copilot generates an article for him, which he can then edit and publish on the blog.

As you can see, Microsoft 365 Copilot can help you with various tasks, saving you time and effort, and enhancing your productivity and creativity.

Softlanding can help your company get ready for Copilot. We offer readiness assessment engagements for Executive awareness, Business use case discovery, Technical requirements, Adoption and Change management readiness, and Information Governance guidance. Depending on where your company is on its AI journey, one or more of these engagements can help you be ready to include Copilot in your productivity toolkit!

If you want to talk to us about Microsoft 365 Copilot or AI, complete this quick survey here and one of our Account Executives will reach out to you to set up a meeting to discuss options.

Written By:

Brian Kuhn

As Softlanding’s vCIO, Brian engages with clients on strategy, the art-of-the-possible, planning, transformation, road-mapping, business case development, architecture, cloud computing, change management, technology adoption, and project leadership. Brian is passionate about being able to serve, guide, and help clients navigate ever evolving technological change and opportunity, to their business advantage.

More By This Author